Latest news with #primeminister
CBC
2 days ago
- Politics
- CBC
Que. father charged with daughter's murder
July 21, 2025 | A Quebec man who claimed his 9-year-old daughter was abducted is now charged with her murder in New York state. U.S. senators meet with the prime minister to mend fences as the trade war drags on. And, with a fire encroaching on a nearby community, the people of Gander, N.L., open their doors to evacuees.
Japan Times
2 days ago
- Politics
- Japan Times
Ex-residents of Russian-controlled islands off Hokkaido want grave-site visits resumed
Former residents of four islands off the east coast of Hokkaido who were driven off by an invasion by the Soviet Union during the last days of World War II are stepping up pressure on the government to convince Russia to allow them to visit their ancestral grave sites on the islands. Such visits, which were allowed previously, were halted due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and later by the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. With an increasing sense of urgency due to their advanced years, the former residents, whose average age is 89, have taken their case directly to the prime minister. As of June 30, only 4,907 of the original 17,291 residents of the islands of Kunashiri, Etorofu, Shikotan and Habomai — known as the Northern Territories in Japan — are still alive. In the absence of signs indicating that such visits would resume anytime soon, the former islanders and their descendants are conducting shipboard ceremonies to honor their ancestors for a fourth year in a row. Seven trips will be made from the port of Nemuro in Hokkaido to the waters near the islands for such ceremonies over the next month. The dispute over the Northern Territories dates back to the final days of World War II in August 1945 when the Soviet Union declared war on Japan, breaking the Japanese-Soviet Neutrality Pact. Following Japan's surrender in World War II, the Soviet Union began occupying the islands on Aug. 28, incorporating them into its territory. In 1951, Japan signed the San Francisco Peace Treaty, in which it renounced its claims to the Kuril Islands. But, pointing to prewar legal precedents, Japan insists the Northern Territories are an inherent territory, and that they are not part of the Kuril Islands. Furthermore, the Soviet Union refused to sign the treaty. A 1956 joint declaration between Japan and the Soviet Union ended hostilities between both countries. The declaration included a promise by the Soviet Union to return the Shikotan and Habomai islands to Japan after the signing of a formal peace treaty between them. However, none was ever concluded, and also no agreement was reached regarding the status of Kunashiri and Etorofu. Subsequent agreements, including the 1993 Tokyo Declaration, acknowledged the territorial dispute and pledged continued negotiations. While no progress has been made on a peace treaty, from 1964 until 2019, former residents were allowed limited access to the islands for them to visit their ancestral grave sites. A total of 4,851 people have participated in the grave-site visits, with the last one having taken place in 2019. There are a total of 52 grave sites on the four islands. As the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II approaches next month, a diplomatic solution to the Northern Territories issue remains out of sight. Yuzo Matsumoto, a former resident of Etorofu and director of the League of Residents of Chishima and Habomai Islands, the main group representing former residents of the islands, told the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan on July 7 that the group is appealing to the government to reopen peace treaty negotiations with Russia as soon as possible, to set a path forward for the return of the islands while their former residents are still alive. 'The average age of the former residents is now 89. Our wish is to visit and pay our respects at the graves of our grandparents and to set foot on the land where they were born and raised,' Matsumoto said. On May 13, Matsumoto's group, along with Hokkaido Gov. Naomichi Suzuki and Hokkaido Legislative Assembly Speaker Akira Tomihara, met with Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, during which they called upon him to continue diplomatic negotiations under the government's basic policy of resolving the Northern Territories issue and concluding a peace treaty with Russia to secure the early return of the Northern Territories. They also called on the prime minister to take concrete measures to establish bilateral consultations between Japan and Russia to move toward the prompt resumption of exchanges with the four islands, and the grave-site visits in particular. 'The government is acutely aware that time is running out. We will respond to the issue of grave visits with a clear understanding that it is a humanitarian issue, and it is important that the Russian side accurately and correctly understands this stance,' Ishiba said in reply. Until Aug. 21, seven excursions by ship are scheduled to be made to the waters off eastern Hokkaido for onboard memorial ceremonies by the former islanders and their relatives. The Chishima and Habomai group lists nearly 30,000 second-, third- and fourth-generation descendants of the former islanders. During a July 9 campaign stop in Nagasaki ahead of the July 20 Upper House election, Ishiba sparked concern among former islanders when he remarked that while Nagasaki Prefecture's coastline was the second-longest in Japan after Hokkaido's, the southwestern prefecture would have the longest coastline if the Northern Territories were excluded from the equation. The remarks led many to worry about whether the prime minister considered the four islands as being part of Japan. Matsumoto said his group's top priority for the foreseeable future is pressuring the government into negotiating direct grave-site visits for former island residents. Asked to envision a future in which Russia returned all four islands to Japan and what he would want for them, Matsumoto replied that he would like to see the Japanese government develop the entire area into a national park. 'Just as the Shiretoko Peninsula in Hokkaido is a World Heritage Site, the four islands of the Northern Territories should be turned into a national park. The ecology there, the ecosystem there, should not be lost,' he said.
South China Morning Post
3 days ago
- Politics
- South China Morning Post
Malaysia's top court to hear Anwar's immunity bid in sexual harassment case
The Court of Appeal on Monday ruled that proceedings must be postponed to allow Anwar to pursue a constitutional challenge over whether a sitting prime minister should be shielded from such lawsuits, particularly those related to events before he took office and might be politically motivated. Anwar is facing a civil suit filed by his former research aide, Muhammed Yusoff Rawther, who has accused him of sexual assault at his private residence in 2018, when he was the opposition leader. Anwar has denied the allegations. The trial was initially scheduled to begin in mid-June, but a three-member bench agreed it should be deferred to give Anwar sufficient time to seek clarification from the Federal Court on the scope of legal protections afforded to a serving prime minister. Anwar's lawyers have argued that the prime minister is 'simply asserting his right to raise constitutional questions of public importance' and is not attempting to avoid trial. The questions include whether a sitting prime minister should be granted protection from politically motivated suits aimed at undermining the government, and whether civil suits involving conduct before a leader taking office should be subject to safeguards.
ABC News
13-07-2025
- Politics
- ABC News
Federal politics live: Government brushes off 'hypothetical' demand over Taiwan
The Albanese government is refusing to be drawn over how it would respond if the US and China went to war over Taiwan. It comes as the prime minister begins his day in Shanghai with high-level talks on green steel. Follow all the updates in our live blog.
The Independent
10-07-2025
- Politics
- The Independent
Starmer's migrant deal with Macron is a promising start
The prime minister has been criticised for the modesty of the agreement that he has secured with the French president on cross- Channel migration. He should instead be congratulated for having obtained a returns deal at all. It is more than his Conservative predecessors managed, and it is certainly more than Nigel Farage, the leader of Reform and peddler of 'simple' solutions, could do. The modesty of the arrangement is sensible. Returning undocumented migrants is a complex matter, legally and logistically. It is a good idea to show 'proof of concept', as government sources put it, on a small scale, to show that it would be possible with larger numbers. The pilot scheme has already been attacked by the Conservatives on the grounds that it would not be a deterrent. If Britain is able to return 50 people a week to France, that would amount to a small fraction, about 5 per cent, of the numbers currently arriving by small boat. As Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, points out, this means that those attempting the crossing would know that they have a 95 per cent chance of staying in the UK as long as they make it halfway across the Channel, when they have to be picked up by the British authorities. But Mr Philp is missing at least two points. One is that, if the scheme works, it could be expanded. The other is that he argues that the Rwanda scheme would have acted as a deterrent, even though its total capacity of a few hundred would have taken even fewer migrants than this pilot scheme. Mr Farage is even further off beam. His policy is to return migrants to French beaches without permission and by violating French waters. It is hard to see how that can end well, let alone with many migrants being returned. He and Mr Philp would do better to congratulate Sir Keir Starmer for his negotiating skill and his success in landing the deal with Emmanuel Macron that Rishi Sunak tried and failed to secure. We will now be able to discover what is possible rather than listening to lectures about what would have happened if the Rwanda scheme, which the Conservatives had years to implement but which Mr Sunak chose to abandon by calling an election, had gone ahead. Sir Keir was right to cancel the cruel, expensive and ineffective scheme, and now offers the prospect of something better and potentially workable. The whole point of a pilot scheme is that we will be able to find out whether migrants will be able to frustrate the policy by appealing to the courts. The plan will probably require a new fast-track legal channel, so that new boat arrivals can be turned round quickly, in which case it would make sense to test that on a smaller scale. And the other half of the plan, to take an equivalent number of genuine refugees whose claim of a family connection to the UK has been accepted at a processing centre in France, is also fraught with difficulty. How will claims be ranked in order of priority? Again, starting with small numbers is the right approach. Obviously, the end point desired by Sir Keir and indeed by most of the British people, would be a larger scheme which would then quickly become a very small one. If migrants knew that they could not stay in the UK, they would stop trying to cross the Channel altogether. Sir Keir's critics are right about one thing: deterrence is key. French beach patrols may stop some crossings, especially if the dinghies are punctured, but they cannot stop the demand for a new life in Britain. This scheme offers the chance of humane deterrence. This is a nettle that must be grasped, not just by the UK and France, but by the whole of Europe. Sir Keir and Mr Macron have made a promising start.
