Singapore’s prime minister Lee Hsien Loong will step down on May 15, with his deputy Lawrence Wong in line to take over, his office said.
Mr Lee (72) will formally advise the city-state’s president to appoint Mr Wong, who is currently deputy prime minister and finance minister, to succeed him, his office said in a statement.
Mr Wong, who has the unanimous support of legislators in the long-ruling People’s Action Party (PAP), will be sworn in on the same day, it said.
Mr Lee has served as prime minister and head of the PAP since August 2004.
He announced last November that he would retire this year and has already named Mr Wong as his designated successor. Mr Lee originally planned to step down before turning 70, but those plans were shelved because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
“For any country, a leadership transition is a significant moment. Lawrence and the 4G (fourth-generation) team have worked hard to gain the people’s trust, notably during the pandemic,” Mr Lee said in a Facebook post on Monday.
Mr Lee (right), during a meeting with New Zealand’s prime minister
More than 40 people remained stranded in cable cars high above a mountain in southern Turkey, the day after one pod hit a post and burst open, killing one person and injuring seven.
The incident occurred at around 5.30pm on Friday on the Tunektepe cable car, just outside the Mediterranean city of Antalya, during the busy Eid al-Fitr holiday.
Operations to rescue the stranded people continued throughout the night.
A severely damaged pod on the cable car line
Okay Memis, director of the Turkish search and rescue agency AFAD, told media on Saturday morning that 128 people in 16 pods had been rescued “under difficult conditions”, adding: “The rescue of 43 others in eight remaining pods is ongoing.”
He added that rescuers hope to complete rescue operations before dark.
The casualties occurred when a pod hit a post, sending passengers plummeting to the mountainside below, officials said.
State-run Anadolu Agency identified the dead man as a 54-year-old Turk.
The injured were six Turkish citizens and one Kyrgyz national, including two children. They were rescued by coastguard helicopters.
Images on Turkish media showed the battered pod swaying from dislodged cables on the side of the rocky mountain as medics tended the wounded.
Rescue and emergency team members work with passengers
A total of 543 first responders and seven helicopters were involved in the rescue operations, including teams from AFAD, the coastguard, firefighters and mountaineering teams from different parts of Turkey, officials said.
Friday was the final day of a three-day public holiday in Turkey marking the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which sees families flock to coastal resorts.
The cable car carries tourists from Konyaalti beach to a restaurant and viewing platform at the summit of the 2,010ft Tunektepe peak. It is run by Antalya Metropolitan Municipality.
The cable car line was completed in 2017 and receives a major inspection around the beginning of the year, as well as routine inspections throughout the year.
Antalya Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office has launched an investigation. An expert commission including mechanical and electrical engineers and health and safety experts was assigned to determine the cause of the incident.
Divers in northern Italy have recovered the last two bodies of workers killed by an explosion that collapsed and flooded several levels of an underground hydroelectric plant, bringing the total number of confirmed dead in the incident to seven.
The explosion at the Enel Green Power plant, in northern Bologna province, occurred on Tuesday at a depth of some 40 metres (130 feet) below water level.
Four other workers who were wounded in the massive blast are currently in hospital with two of them still in a serious condition, officials said.
Divers who worked for more than two days to recover the victims’ bodies likened the scene to an underwater earthquake-struck building.
The blast at the Bargi plant happened during work to increase the plant’s efficiency, the company said in a statement.
A fire broke out when a turbine exploded on the eighth floor below the surface, flooding the floor below.
Rescue operations inside the Enel Green Power hydroelectric plant
The cause is still unknown.
Local prosecutors have opened a probe into the accident.
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has mocked a scheduled round of Ukraine peace talks in Switzerland, warning that Moscow will not accept any enforced plans that ignore its interests.
Switzerland’s government said on Wednesday that it will host a high-level international conference in June to help chart a path toward peace in Ukraine after more than two years of fighting, and expressed hope that Russia might join in the peace process someday.
Putin claimed that Russia hadn’t been invited to join June’s talks, while pointing at Swiss recognition that a peace process can’t happen without Russia.
“They aren’t inviting us there,” Putin said.
“Moreover, they think there is nothing for us to do there, but at the same time they say that’s it’s impossible to decide anything without us. It would have been funny if it weren’t so sad.”
Russia has dismissed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s peace formula requiring Moscow to pull back its troops, pay compensation to Ukraine and face an international tribunal for its action.
Speaking during Thursday’s meeting with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko in Moscow, Putin said that Russia is open for negotiations, but will never accept “any schemes that have nothing to do with reality”.
Putin has repeatedly said that he sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022 to protect Russian interests and prevent Ukraine from posing a major security threat to Russia by joining Nato.
Kyiv and its allies have denounced Russia’s military campaign as an unprovoked act of aggression.
Putin has claimed that Russian forces have the upper hand after the failure of Ukraine’s counteroffensive last year, arguing that Ukraine and the West will “sooner or later” have to accept a settlement on Moscow’s terms.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov warned last week that prospective negotiations to end the fighting in Ukraine could be successful only if they take Moscow’s interests into account, dismissing a planned round of peace talks as a Western ruse to rally broader international support for Kyiv.
A senior Chinese official arrived in North Korea and held talks on how to boost co-operation in the countries’ highest-level meeting in about five years, North Korea’s state media reported on Friday,
Zhao Leji, chairman of China’s National People’s Congress and considered the number three official in the ruling Communist Party, arrived in North Korea on Thursday.
China’s government earlier said he will stay in North Korea until Saturday.
Mr Zhao met his North Korean counterpart Choe Ryong Hae and discussed how to promote exchanges and cooperation on all areas such as politics, economy and culture, North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported.
The two also exchanged views on unspecified regional and international issues of mutual concerns, KCNA said.
Mr Zhao is one of the seven members of the Politburo Standing Committee, the Communist Party’s top leadership body headed by Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
His visit to North Korea marked the first bilateral exchange involving a committee member since the coronavirus pandemic started.
In 2019, the two countries held two summit meetings between Mr Xi and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
Observers say North Korea and China are expected to hold a number of exchanges this year to mark the 75th year since they established diplomatic ties.
North Korea has been seeking to boost its co-operation with China and Russia in the face of a standoff with the United States and South Korea over the North’s advancing nuclear programme.
China, North Korea’s biggest aid benefactor, is believed to have long provided clandestine assistance to North Korea in violation of international sanctions.
Mr Kim traveled to Russia in September for a summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The US, South Korea and others accuse North Korea of supplying conventional weapons for Russia’s war in Ukraine in return for advanced weapons technologies and other support.
German legislators are expected to vote on a government plan to make it easier for transgender, intersex and nonbinary people to change their name and gender in official documents.
The “self-determination law”, one of several social reforms that Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s liberal-leaning coalition government pledged when it took office in late 2021, would take effect on November 1.
It would allow adults to change their first name and legal gender at registry offices without further formalities. They would have to notify the office three months before making the change.
The existing “transsexual law”, which dates back four decades, requires individuals who want to change gender on official documents to first obtain assessments from two experts “sufficiently familiar with the particular problems of transsexualism” and then a court decision.
Since that law was drawn up, Germany’s top court has struck down other provisions that required transgender people to get divorced and sterilised, and to undergo gender-transition surgery.
The new legislation focuses on individuals’ legal identities. It does not involve any revisions to Germany’s rules for gender-transition surgery.
The new rules allow minors 14 years and older to change their name and legal gender with approval from their parents or guardians – if they don’t agree, teenagers could ask a family court to overrule them.
In the case of children younger than 14, parents or guardians would have to make registry office applications on their behalf.
After a formal change of name and gender takes effect, no further changes would be allowed for a year.
The new legislation provides for operators of, for example, gyms and changing rooms for women to continue to decide who has access.
Nyke Slawik, one of two transgender women who were elected as legislators in 2021, said ahead of the vote in parliament’s lower house, or Bundestag, that the new rules would have saved her over a year of dealing with courts, seeking expert assessments and spending nearly 2,000 euros (£1,707).
“We finally want to make it easier,” Ms Slawik of the Greens, one of the governing parties, told ARD television.
“Many other countries have gone this way, and Germany is simply following suit in significantly simplifying this registration.”
In other socially liberal reforms, Scholz’s government has legalised the possession of limited amounts of cannabis; eased the rules on gaining German citizenship and ended restrictions on holding dual citizenship; and ended a ban on doctors “advertising” abortion services.
Same-sex marriage was already legalised in 2017.
Ukraine’s parliament has passed a law that will govern how the country recruits new conscripts, following months of delay and after thousands of amendments were submitted to water down the initial draft.
Lawmakers dragged their feet for months over the legislation, which is expected to be unpopular.
The law was spurred by a request from the military command under former army commander Valerii Zaluzhny, who said Ukraine was in need of up to 500,000 new recruits to boost army ranks.
Exhausted soldiers, on the front lines since Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, had no means to rotate out for rest, while many thousands of Ukrainian men continue to evade the draft.
Ukrainian foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba said more than 200,000 people in the Kharkiv region were without power after night-time attacks
The law brings into effect a host of changes to the current system by expanding the powers of Ukrainian authorities to issue draft notices using an electronic system.
Incumbent army chief Oleksandr Syrskyi and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky have since revised the new recruits figure after conducting an audit, saying the number needed was not as high because soldiers could be rotated from the rear.
Mr Zaluzhny’s dismissal from post was reportedly over the mobilisation issue.
The vote came after parliament’s defence committee removed a key provision from the draft on Tuesday that would ensure the rotation of servicemen after 36 months of combat, a move that surprised some lawmakers as it had been a promise of the Ukrainian leadership.
Lawmaker Oleksii Honcharenko said in a Telegram post that he was shocked by the move to remove the provision. It was likely to have been taken out because, considering the scale and intensity of the war against Russia, it would prove difficult to implement.
Ukraine already suffers from a lack of trained recruits capable of fighting, and demobilising soldiers on the front lines now would deprive Ukrainian forces of their most capable fighters.
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On Wednesday, the parliamentary defence committee instructed the Defence Ministry to draft a comprehensive bill on demobilisation of military personnel within the next eight months, news reports cited ministry spokesperson Dmytro Lazutkin as saying.
In night-time missile and drone attacks, at least 10 of the strikes damaged energy infrastructure in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city.
Ukrainian foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba said more than 200,000 people in the region were without power and that Russia was “trying to destroy Kharkiv’s infrastructure and leave the city in darkness”.
In the Odesa region, four people were killed and 14 injured in Russian missile strikes on Wednesday evening, regional governor Oleh Kiper said.
Energy facilities were also hit in the Zaporizhzhia and Lviv regions.
The Paris 2024 Olympic triathlon could be delayed or see the swimming leg cancelled if water quality in the River Seine is adversely affected by weather conditions, according to the games’ president Tony Estanguet.
It was acknowledged that the possibility of heavy rain in the French capital could raise levels of E Coli in the water, despite over a billion euros having been invested in making the river safe to swim in for the first time in a hundred years.
On Tuesday, the Surfrider Foundation Europe charity issued a warning that samples taken have shown dangerous levels of bacteria in the water, just over a hundred days before the games are due to start.
And Estanguet has acknowledged there could be a knock-on effect to the possible use of the river.
“When we decided to have this competition in the Seine we knew it will be a big challenge,” he said speaking at Sport Accord in Birmingham, as reported by Guardian.
“But with the authorities, there is a big programme of investment and, when we talk about legacy, this project is fantastic.
“And we are still confident that the triathlon will be based in the Seine because we have contingency plans. We can postpone for rainy conditions. Because it’s programmed at the beginning of the Games we can wait for better conditions. So we are confident that it will be possible to use the Seine.
“We change the date and postpone from one day to three days until it’s OK. And there is a final decision where we could not swim – it’s part of the rules of the International Federation. It’s what we want to avoid, of course.”
Russian officials have scrambled to help homeowners displaced by floods as water levels rose in the Ural River.
Floods in the Orenburg region near Russia’s border with Kazakhstan sparked the evacuation of thousands of people following the collapse of a dam on Saturday.
Russia’s government has declared the situation a federal emergency.
Although Russian president Vladimir Putin is frequently shown on Russian state television meeting officials and travelling across the country, the Kremlin said he is not yet planning to visit the flood-hit region.
Rescuers use a boat in a flooded area of Orenburg, Russia
The river’s water level in the city of Orenburg was above 10 metres on Wednesday, state news agency Ria Novosti reported, citing the regional governor.
Photos shared by Russian news outlets showed roads covered in water, submerged fields and partially submerged houses.
The water was approaching high-rise buildings, Ria Novosti said, and more than 300 homes were flooded overnight, according to state news agency Tass.
People in the city of Orsk gathered in a rare protest on Monday, calling for compensation after their homes were damaged.
Protests are unusual in Russia, where authorities have consistently cracked down on any form of dissent following Mr Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
Hundreds of people gathered in front of the administrative building in Orsk, and videos posted on Russian social media showed people chanting “Putin, help us” and “shame”.
Other videos on social media showed angry Russians refusing to leave the areas near their homes because they said thieves were looting abandoned houses with boats.
The floods prompted the Orsk oil refinery to suspend operations, Interfax said.
The floods had forced more than 4,000 people, including 885 children, to evacuate in the Orenburg region, the regional government said on Sunday.
Tass said on Monday that around 10,000 homes, including some 7,000 in Orsk, were flooded.
Following the protest, Tass reported that the governor of the Orenburg region, Denis Pasler, promised compensation payments to those affected.
The Ural River flows from the southern section of the Ural Mountains into the north end of the Caspian Sea, through Russia and Kazakhstan.
The Olympic rings will be displayed on the Eiffel Tower, organisers have said in a statement, as the French capital prepares to mark 100 days until the start of the Paris Games.
A 29m-long and 15m-high structure of five Olympic rings, made entirely of recycled French steel, will be displayed on the south side of the 135-year-old historic landmark in central Paris, overlooking the Seine River.
About 10,500 athletes will parade through the heart of the French capital on boats on the Seine along a 3.7-mile route in the opening ceremony at sunset on July 26th.
The Eiffel Tower will feature prominently in the July 26th to August 11th Paris Games and the following Paralympics.
The Olympic and Paralympic medals in Paris are being embedded with pieces from a hexagonal chunk of iron taken from the monument.
The hugely popular landmark in central Paris has seen soaring visitor numbers in the lead-up to the 2024 Games.
Work on the Eiffel Tower to install the rings is set to begin at the end of the month, the organisers said.
