Stuck at the Stop Sign
NEED TO KNOW
Stuck at the Stop Sign
MALAYSIA
Two seemingly unrelated events symbolize how Malaysia is starting a new chapter in its history.
Malaysian tycoon Ananda Krishnan, 86, recently passed away. As the Associated Press explained, his shares in the media company Astro, oil services deliverer Bumi Armada, telecommunications company Maxis, and satellite company Measat were estimated to be worth more than $5 billion. A close ally of former pro-business Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, he came up with the idea of the Petronas Twin Towers, an 88-story monument to the South Asian country’s economic and geopolitical heft.
At the same time, floods have claimed at least three lives and displaced more than 90,000 people, reported Reuters, quoting current Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim. The high waters stemmed from torrential rain during the already flood-prone monsoon season that runs from October to March, though the Malaysian news website Aliran warned that climate change was to blame, too.
“To dismiss the deluge as mere inter-monsoon changes is foolish and will only wreak more damage to properties, affect routines, and cost the government more in wasted public money,” wrote the outlet.
These events show how Malaysia, which has enjoyed stellar economic growth in recent years that is credited to the country’s previous generation of leaders, is facing tough, new challenges.
Malaysia’s gross domestic product has been growing at five percent annually due to conservative economic policies – price controls and strong central bankers, for example – while granting incentives to foreign investors. As Bloomberg noted, Anwar has attracted Alphabet, Amazon, and Microsoft to a tech hub, opened the stock market to outsiders, and encouraged women in the Muslim-majority country – albeit with significant Buddhist, Christian, and Hindu minority communities – to join the workforce, too.
Anwar has sought to steer more of that economic growth to green projects to combat climate change, as his Ministry of Natural Resources and Environmental Sustainability said in a statement.
Meanwhile, the country faces other thorny problems in the form of pushback against its conservative social-behavioral policies. Malaysia, for example, has criminalized homosexual activity under civil and Islamic law, wrote Al Jazeera. In an interesting recent case, a court ordered the government to return rainbow-themed watches that officials had seized on the suspicion that they were promoting the LGBTQ agenda because they lacked a warrant, not because seizing pride paraphernalia was questionable. The government complied.
Anwar has also adopted the most strident position against Israel’s devastating prosecution of the war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, alienated the US, and curtailed his flexibility in remaining friends with both the US and China, World Politics Review argued.
Worse, his foreign policy is not helping the country’s domestic priorities.
“Anwar’s foreign policy statements may well exacerbate his domestic policy challenges in the long term by hampering his efforts to court US and Western investors,” WPR wrote, adding that this was “Complicating matters, even though Anwar has turned a blind eye to China’s increasing assertiveness in Malaysia’s territorial waters, that has not translated into enough of a corresponding economic benefit.”
THE WORLD, BRIEFLY
Biting Back
VENEZUELA
Venezuelan lawmakers passed a controversial law this week that criminalizes support for US sanctions, a move that escalates the government’s crackdown on dissent following a disputed presidential election in July that the opposition claims was rigged, Al Jazeera reported.
The new Simon Bolivar Liberator Law classifies economic sanctions as crimes against humanity and imposes penalties of 25 to 30 years in prison for individuals supporting them. It also bans supporters of sanctions from holding public office for up to 60 years, while allowing authorities to prosecute individuals in absentia and seize their property.
Media outlets that are accused of supporting sanctions can be fined up to $51.7 million or shut down entirely.
Critics said the measure is aimed at silencing dissent and consolidating power under President Nicolas Maduro.
The bill also follows heightened tensions with the United States: In recent weeks, the US House of Representatives passed a bill that bans the federal government from working with anyone who has ties to Maduro’s government.
At the same time, Washington imposed a series of sanctions on 21 individuals accused of undermining Venezuela’s presidential vote that was held on July 28, the Associated Press noted.
The National Electoral Council – controlled by Maduro loyalists – declared the incumbent the winner of that race, but a result that the opposition rejected, later publishing online tally sheets from 80 percent of voting machines showing their candidate Edmundo González as the winner of the race.
Protests erupted after the election, leading to more than 2,200 arrests, including political leaders, lawyers, and election volunteers.
The US has recognized González as the country’s legitimate president. Even so, he fled to Spain in September but plans to return in January, saying he is “morally prepared” to face detention.
Meanwhile, opposition figure María Corina Machado is now facing new charges of treason and conspiracy over comments endorsing the US House measure.
Machado has rejected the accusations.
Deadly Games
GUINEA
At least 56 people died in a stampede at a soccer stadium in Guinea’s second-most populous city over the weekend, an incident that sparked calls for an official investigation and criticism of the ruling military junta, CBS News reported.
On Monday, authorities said clashes erupted the day before between soccer fans during a local tournament in the southern city of Nzérékoré following a disputed penalty. Local media reported that security forces tried to restore calm by using tear gas, with footage showing fans skirmishing as others tried to flee.
Government officials announced a probe to find those responsible, with Prime Minister Oury Bah promising full medical and psychological support to all those injured.
The stampede took place as Guinea was holding a tournament in honor of junta leader, President Mamadi Doumbouya, who seized power in a military coup in 2021.
An opposition political coalition known as the National Alliance for Change and Democracy called for an investigation into the incident and accused authorities of having “significant responsibility for these grave events,” according to the BBC.
The opposition also condemned the tournament as an attempt to boost support for the “illegal and inappropriate” political ambitions of the country’s military leader.
Doumbouya came to power after overthrowing President Alpha Condé three years ago, saying the West African country was at risk of slipping into chaos.
In recent years, a growing number of West African countries, including Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso have had military coups, with promises of returning to civilian rule impeded by the military rulers.
A Small Token of Justice
BELGIUM
A court in Belgium ruled on Monday that the government must pay reparations to five mixed-race women who were forcibly removed from their families and placed into care homes during Belgium’s colonial era 70 years ago, according to the BBC.
Then, in the Belgian Congo, thousands of mixed-race children were taken from their mothers by order of the Belgian state which was concerned they would be a threat to their power in the future. The children were placed into orphanages mainly operated by the Catholic Church, often subject to abuse because they were “children of sin,” the Guardian reported.
All five of the plaintiffs, now in their 70s, were taken by the state when under the age of seven. The women launched their legal case for compensation against the Belgian government in 2021, asking for an initial payment of 50,000 euros ($52,340).
The Belgian government has previously acknowledged its wrongdoings, issuing a formal apology to an estimated 20,000 victims of forced family separations in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, and Rwanda during the 1940s and 1950s. The government deemed the apology a “step toward awareness and recognition of this part of our national history.”
In 2017, the Catholic church also apologized for its role in the crimes. However, one of the victims, plaintiff Monique Bitu Bingi, had previously said an apology was insufficient: “We were destroyed. Apologies are easy, but when you do something, you have to take responsibility for it.”
The women’s legal battle succeeded at the Brussels Court of Appeal, which overturned a prior decision that found that too much time had passed for the women to be eligible for reparations. The court said the state’s actions were a crime against humanity and removed the statute of limitations.
The court also said that the colonial government had a “plan to systematically search for and abduct children born to a Black mother and a White father.” At the time, most White fathers refused to acknowledge their mixed-race children. Also, the children did not receive Belgian nationality automatically.
DISCOVERIES
Truth in Droppings
What did dinosaurs eat to rise to dominance 230 million years ago? The answer, it turns out, lies in fossilized feces, according to a new study.
Researchers at Uppsala University in Sweden conducted one of the largest studies of dinosaur droppings, or coprolites, analyzing more than 500 samples to piece together ancient food practices.
The findings showed that dietary adaptability may have been the key to dinosaurs’ success during the turbulent Late Triassic period.
“Piecing together ‘who ate whom’ in the past is true detective work,” lead author Martin Qvarnström explained in a statement. “Being able to examine what animals ate and how they interacted with their environment helps us understand what enabled dinosaurs to be so successful.”
Qvarnström and his team used advanced synchrotron imaging to uncover undigested food remains in the coprolites, including fish scales, insect parts, plants, and bones.
They discovered that early dinosaurs were not very picky.
“The first dinosaur ancestors were opportunistic,” Qvarnström told NPR. “They were eating insects, fish, plants – everything that they came across.” The researchers also came across surprising details about the diets of some of the first large herbivores, such as sauropods: Their droppings contained tree ferns and other plants, and even charcoal – the latter, researchers believe, may have helped detoxify their stomachs from toxic plants.
The findings highlight the adaptability of dinosaurs during a period of massive environmental change. As the supercontinent Pangea broke apart, the climate shifted dramatically, favoring flexible eaters over more picky competitors.
The study also reconstructed entire ancient ecosystems by combining data from coprolites with climate models and other fossils. It fills a critical gap in understanding the first 30 million years of dinosaur evolution, offering a five-step model of their rise to dominance.
The authors hope that their research will inspire future studies on dino droppings.
“I think it’s really cool and an underestimated part of paleontology,” Qvarnström told NPR.
Clarification: In Monday’s NEED TO KNOW section, we said in our “Environmental Chess” item that temperatures worldwide are now forecast to be 5.6 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century. To clarify, they are forecast to be 5.6 degrees Fahrenheit higher by the end of the century. We apologize for the error.
