Although the coalition had agreed prior to last year’s election that Dr Mahathir would hand over the reins to nemesis-turned-ally Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim, who had yet to be pardoned from a controversial sodomy conviction then, no timeline was formally agreed.

Those aligned to Anwar, who was sacked as deputy premier in 1998 by Dr Mahathir and then jailed, insisted that the Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR) president should take over the post in a year.

Dr Mahathir told a press conference with the foreign media: “We will make most of the corrections within a period of two years, and after that I think the others will have less problems to face.”

Dr Mahathir, who turns 94 in two months, said one of the issues already dealt with in the first 12 months of the PH administration was corruption, “so now I think it is the economy” that his government will focus on this year.

“The fact is the previous government was totally corrupt. There is very little corruption now.

“People can do business with the government now without paying extra. That is a very important achievement that contributes towards the stability of the economy,” he said.

PH leaders have claimed that the ousted Barisan Nasional, which Dr Mahathir led for 22 years up to 2003, had left behind RM1.1 trillion (S$360bil) in government liabilities, with several overpriced deals in the offing, such as the now renegotiated East Coast Rail Link and postponed High-Speed Rail to Singapore.

The government has also in recent months dedicated more than RM23bil to bailing out land development authority Felda and Muslim pilgrimage fund Tabung Haji, important institutions for the Malay majority.

“The key challenge is to restore the image of this country. We have a lot of people taking potshots at us, including the press and now social media, because they see us as a target,” Dr Mahathir added.

“We have to do something, and when you do something you expose yourselves to criticism. We must take action against miscreants who stole money from the government.

“Of course, some people are not very happy, because they thought they can get away with their misdeeds.”

However, Dr Mahathir also sought to temper expectations by saying some election pledges could not be fulfilled due to financial constraints and the need for constitutional amendments.

“For that, we need two-thirds majority (in Parliament). We need the support of the opposition,” he said of some reforms aimed at decentralising power from the premier and correcting biased election maps.

PH claims these were abused by the previous prime minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak.

PH had also promised several economic benefits, such as abolishing tolled highways, but now finds the Treasury incapable of buying out the billion-dollar concessions.

    The North “fired what appeared to be two short-range missiles” from North Pyongan province, Seoul’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement, adding they flew 270 and 420 kilometres (170 and 260 miles) and the South Korean and US militaries were jointly analysing them.

The firing of missiles welcomed a US envoy’s visit to Seoul by firing at least one projectile for the second time in a week Thursday, the South’s military said, as Pyongyang seeks to up the ante in deadlocked nuclear negotiations with Washington.

The launch came after North Korea carried out a military drill and fired multiple projectiles on Saturday, with at least one believed to be a short-range missile.

    It was also hours after the US Special Representative on North Korea, Stephen Biegun, arrived in Seoul late Wednesday for talks with South Korean officials on the allies’ approach towards Pyongyang.

It is Biegun’s first visit to Seoul since the Hanoi summit between US President Donald Trump and the North’s leader Kim Jong Un collapsed without agreement on rolling back Pyongyang’s nuclear programme in exchange for sanctions relief.

“We are still analysing whether it is a single or multiple projectiles,” Joint Chiefs of Staff spokesman Kim Joon-rak told AFP, adding the launch fired in an eastward direction appeared to originate from Sino-ri in North Pyongan province.

The decades-old Sino-ri operational missile base, 75 kilometres (45 miles) northwest of Pyongyang, is one of North Korea’s longest-running missile facilities and houses a regiment-sized unit equipped with Nodong-1 medium-range ballistic missiles, according to the Centre for Strategic & International Studies.

Anything fired from it in an easterly direction would have to cross the Korean peninsula before reaching the sea.

Biegun met his South Korean counterpart Lee Do-hoon for breakfast on Thursday but much of his schedule was not made public.

The US envoy is due to meet the South’s foreign and unification ministers Friday as the security allies — Washington stations 28,500 troops in the South to defend it from its neighbour — work on their approach towards Pyongyang.

With Thursday’s launch, said Hong Min, a senior researcher at the state-run Korea Institute for National Unification, “North Korea is sending a clear message that it will not be satisfied with humanitarian aid” being considered by Seoul.

“It is saying, ‘We want security guarantees in return for the denuclearisation process’,” he added.

“Kim could have felt he needed to show a strong military posture to ease complaints following a joint South-US military drill last month.”

– ‘Stop nonsense’ –

A summit between South Korean President Moon Jae-in and the North’s Kim Jong Un a year ago triggered a rapid diplomatic thaw on the peninsula, paving the way for a historic first meeting between Kim and Trump.

But their second summit in Vietnam in February broke up without an agreement or even a joint statement, and the North has since blamed Seoul for siding with Washington, leaving inter-Korean relations in limbo.

But Pyongyang, Seoul and Washington have all refrained from calling Saturday’s launch a missile, which could jeopardise the ongoing diplomacy by violating UN Security Council resolutions as well as Kim’s promise of a freeze on long-range missile tests.

The North has said Saturday’s drill involved multiple Pyongyang “long-range multiple rocket launchers and tactical guided weapons”.

But experts say it launched at least one short-range missile during the exercise, with a report on the respected 38 North website suggesting that it was a “direct import” of a Russian-produced Iskander.

“The debris generated by the launch in North Korea is a virtual match of a launch of Iskander conducted by Russia,” it said.

If North Korea imported Iskanders from Russia, the report added, “it has an existing capacity to deliver warheads to targets in South Korea with great precision”.

Pyongyang insisted earlier Thursday that Saturday’s “routine drill” was conducted within its own waters and added the “flying objects” did not pose any threat to the US, South Korea and Japan.

“The firing of the intermediate- and long-range missile and the ICBM was not involved in it,” a spokesman for the North’s delegation for military talks with the South said in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.

He condemned Seoul’s criticism of the launch, with KCNA’s headline reading: “S. Korean military authorities urged to stop nonsense”.

– Visits fall –

The number of South Koreans visiting the North has slumped this year with inter-Korean ties stalling, figures showed.

All civilian communication between the two countries — which remain technically at war after the 1950-53 conflict ended with an armistice instead of a peace treaty — is banned and South Koreans need government approvals to travel north.

So far this year only 617 have been granted permission, the unification ministry said, little more than the monthly average during 2018, when a total of 6,689 Southern citizens went North to attend government meetings, sports games, cultural and reunions for families separated since the Korean War.

“Due to domestic and foreign political events since the US-North Korea summit in Hanoi, it has decreased somewhat since last year,” the ministry said in a statement.

Duterte’s aide tried to remove the cockroach using a folder before it could find its way to the front, but it got the President’s attention and eventually, the unfazed Chief Executive took matters into his own hand, flicking the insect down to floor and went on with his speech like nothing happened.

Images on Facebook showed a crumpled Biman Bangladesh Airlines plane lying on the grass at the side of the runway.

An AFP photographer saw an injured woman being carried to an ambulance on a stretcher.

“One pilot, an air hostess and nine passengers were slightly injured,” a police officer at the airport told AFP, asking not to be named, adding that the plane slid from the runway as it landed at 6.50pm (1220 GMT).

    “It happened near Terminal 3 where it fell onto the cargo runway as it landed,” he added, saying that the nose and both wings were damaged.

Yangon International Airport did not confirm the crash but announced that heavy rain had caused them to suspend “runway operations until further notice”.

Other incoming flights were diverted to the capital Naypyidaw.

Thirty-one people were on board from Bangladesh, Myanmar, Canada, China, India, France and Switzerland.

Civilian airline accidents are relatively rare in Myanmar although there have been a series of crashes of military aircraft.

Three fighter pilots were killed last year in three separate crashes.

Bad weather caused a military plane to crash into the Andaman sea in 2017 with 122 people on board, one of the deadliest aviation accidents in the country’s history.

The beaming couple said parenting had been a “dream” and “amazing” but kept the world guessing as to the name of their son, who was born on Monday.

We applaud the government’s decision to release both men and urge upon the government the need to protect and ensure press freedom.

Both Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo have been imprisoned for over 500 days for simply doing their job and reporting the truth. While we commend the government on their release, we maintain that neither should have spent a day behind bars.

While we do not question Myanmar’s right to press for redress if it feels wronged by a news report, we question the use of a colonial era law, introduced by an oppressive British Colonial Government, to maintain order.

We humbly remind the government that as Myanmar democratizes and strives to throw off the weight of past oppression that such laws are a heavy anchor imposed upon her by past injustices.

A credible press is a crucial and a necessary component of a civil society. A vibrant media sector and inquisitive journalists are assets for the population and should not be muzzled, intimidated or censored. Myanmar journalists sadly remain under severe threat despite the Reuters journalists’ release.

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The jail term of 44 years for her daughter, Jittisopha – sentenced for helping hide the cash in overseas bank accounts in 2017 – was reduced to 40 years after the court said she was not involved in bribery in the 2007 case.

Juthamas was found guilty on 11 counts, with six years for each count, totalling 66 years.

However, according to the law, a convict cannot be imprisoned for longer than 50 years. Jittisopha was earlier found guilty on 11 counts, with four years for each charge, totalling 44 years.

The mother and the daughter have been in custody since 2017 after the lower court denied their bail request, fearing that they might flee the country.

However, the Appeals Court for Corruption and Misconduct Cases cancelled the earlier order to seize Bt62 million found to have been earned dishonestly, saying the public prosecutors did not make the request.

According to the lower court’s ruling, both defendants were found guilty of colluding to avoid free competition in favour of Gerald Green and Patricia Green, a Los Angeles-based couple.

The court found that the couple made 59 transfers into the bank accounts of Jittisopha and her unnamed friends, totalling US$1.82 million.

The Greens served time in a US jail for running the scheme, which saw them funnel money to Juthamas over five years to secure rights to run the annual Bangkok International Film Festival.

The contracts enabled the couple to generate more than US$13.5 million in revenue, according to the FBI.

Defence lawyer Suchart Chomkul and the public prosecutors said they would study the ruling before deciding whether to submit the case to the Supreme Court.

Both Juthamas and her daughter showed little emotion during the sentencing. They were taken back to jail.

Tiffany Ong, 30, received lewd images from an unknown man and suffered further mental torture after he sent her videos of his private parts since March 10.

After a month, Ong finally picked up the courage to lodge a police report, and the police sought her help to lure her harasser out.

“The police advised me to help them arrest the harasser, and I agreed to do so by asking him out to dinner,” she said.

The harasser has since been charged in court and will be imprisoned for eight months.

Ong also revealed that the harassment started after she discovered that her personal details had been abused by someone she used to know to start an account on a dating app called Skout earlier this year.

She later received many indecent proposals via WhatsApp, but had calmly fended off the suitors, until she encountered a more relentless one in March.

Ong said she had lodged a report with Skout to get the fake account deleted, and was advised to lodge a police report over the matter as well.

Ong later brought her case up with MCA Public Services and Complaints Department head Datuk Seri Michael Chong, in the hope of ending her distress.

Chong said a police report has been made to arrest the person who misused her information.

“We will leave it to the police to conduct their investigations,” he said.

The worker, identified as Chaiya Mahakote of Udon Thani province, was wounded at his hip by stray shrapnel. He was rushed to hospital in Tel Aviv and was now under recovery, but continues to experience some pain at the site of his wound.

Chaiya’s plight came to light after a Facebook page of Thais working in Israel reported the incident. The page posted photos of Chaiya lying and bleeding on a floor. A photo showed a friend trying to stop the bleeding at his hip.

During the weekend, it was reported that Israeli aircraft and tanks had conducted more than 350 strikes in the strip, while militants from Hamas and the separate Palestinian Islamic Jihad fired close to 700 rockets and mortars. Both sides entered a ceasefire on Monday, suspending some of the deadliest fighting since a war in 2014.

The Thai Embassy in Tel Aviv assigned its consul, who brought along senior monks of Sangha Thanmara temple in Buengkarn province to visit Chaiya in hospital. The monks were visiting the country as part of an embassy project.

Chaiya, who was working in an orange field in Ohad in the south of Israel when the incident happened, told the visitors he was now in a better condition and had received good medical treatment.

Meanwhile Chak Samutklin, a labour official, revealed that Chaiya went to work in Israel under the Thailand Cooperation on Placement of Workers project of the Labour Ministry’s Employment Department.

Chak yesterday went to visit Chaiya’s mother, Bualoi, 68 to inform her about labour rights and compensation her son will receive from a ministry fund as he was working legally in Israel.

Bualoi said she learnt about her son’s injuries after her daughter showed her photos from Facebook. At first she was afraid to look at the photos and kept asking how serious his wounds were.

“I’m quite relieved that my son is now recovering and has his employers and friends to take care of him,” she said.

Chaiya had worked overseas in Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea and Israel, she said.

The Thai Embassy in Israel and the Labour Office have prepared evacuation plans for Thais in case of an emergency in the volatile region.

Another Thai worker, Payab Kongchuay, who went to work in Israel under the same project, died of heart failure. The Labour Ministry will take care of the process of brining home his body, as well as compensation for his family.