31/03/2025

MONDAY | MAR 31, 2025

/thesuntelegram FOLLOW / Malaysian Paper

ON TELEGRAM m RAM

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Australian PM lures voters with price crackdown

Police book man over wildfires SEOUL: Police have launched an investigation into a man suspected of accidentally igniting the country’s worst wildfires in history while cleaning his relatives’ gravesites, an investigator said yesterday. More than a dozen fires have been fanned by high winds and dry conditions, killing 30 people and burning more than 48,000ha of forest, the worst of its kind recorded in South Korea, according to the Interior Ministry. In North Gyeongsang province’s Uiseong, the hardest-hit region with 12,800ha of its woodland affected, a 56 year-old man was suspected of mistakenly starting a fire while tending to his grandparents’ gravesites on March 22, said an official from the provincial police. “We booked him without detention for investigation on Saturday on suspicion of inadvertently starting the wildfires,” said the official. Investigators will summon him for questioning once the on-site inspection is complete, which could take more than a month, the official said. The suspect’s daughter reportedly told investigators that her father tried to burn tree branches that were hanging over the graves with a cigarette lighter. The flames were “carried by the wind and ended up sparking a wildfire”, the daughter told authorities, Yonhap news agency reported. The police, who have withheld the identities of both, declined to confirm the account. The fires have been fuelled by strong winds and ultra-dry conditions, with the area experiencing below-average rainfall for months, following South Korea’s hottest year on record. Among the 30 dead is a helicopter pilot, who died when his aircraft crashed in a mountainous area. – AFP ISTANBUL: A Swedish journalist who was detained on his arrival in Turkey to cover protests over the jailing of Istanbul’s mayor has been arrested on terror-related charges and for “insulting the president”, the Turkish presidency said yesterday. Joakim Medin, who works for the Dagens ETC newspaper, “has been arrested on charges of membership in an armed terrorist organisation and insulting the president,” the presidency said. Medin was detained on Thursday when his plane landed in Turkiye, and sent to prison the next day. – AFP ACCRA: Three Chinese nationals are missing after their vessel came under a “suspected pirate attack” off the coast of Ghana, authorities said over the weekend. Seven armed individuals on Thursday boarded the Mengxin I vessel in Ghanaian waters and fired warning shots, the Ghanaian military said in a statement. The assailants rounded up members of the crew and sent others into hiding. By the time the attackers departed, the captain, chief mate and chief engineer – all Chinese nationals – were missing, the statement said. They are “suspected of being kidnapped by the attackers”, it said. – AFP SWEDISH JOURNALIST HELD AMID PROTESTS CHINESE SAILORS GO MISSING OFF GHANA

o Big supermarket chains held accountable

Asked how abuses would be addressed, he promised “heavy fines to make sure that they know that if they’re ripping people off, then they’re in the gun to pay a heavy penalty.” The government would set up a task force with representatives from the Treasury, competition regulators and consumer groups to decide on action, Albanese said. Australia was looking at overseas examples of regulating unfair pricing, he said, including in Britain and the European Union. Australia has one of the most concentrated grocery sectors in the world, with big players Coles and Woolworths enjoying considerable power to set prices for consumers and suppliers. Competition regulators said in a report this month that the two companies enjoyed growing profit margins and had “limited incentive to compete vigorously with each other on price”. James Paterson, senior member of the main opposition Liberal Party, said the prime minister had failed to define price gouging. “We are very happy to make price gouging

illegal,” the senator said in an interview with public broadcaster ABC. But the opposition also planned to introduce targeted divestment powers, which could be used as a “last resort” if supermarkets abused their market power, he said. Opposition leader Peter Dutton has proposed cost-of-living measures including a one-year cut to petrol tax, and a scheme to rein in petrol prices by obliging producers to keep a share of output for the domestic market. Annual consumer price inflation was 2.4% in the final quarter of last year, after peaking at 7.8% in 2022. A YouGov survey released yesterday put support for the ruling Labor Party and conservative opposition coalition level, with Labor at 50.2% and the coalition at 49.8% on a two-party preferred basis. That would translate into a hung parliament with Labor one seat short of a majority, it said, putting the government in a “strong” position to remain in power. – AFP

SYDNEY: Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese promised yesterday to outlaw supermarket price gouging with the threat of heavy fines, ahead of a tightly fought May 3 general election. The supermarket crackdown and a surprise income tax cut are among a string of government proposals to ease the cost of living, which voters cite as a top concern. Surveys show the centre-left government and conservative opposition running neck-and-neck in the election race. “Australians deserve a fair go at the checkout. We will hold the big supermarket chains to account,” Albanese told reporters. “Price gouging is when supermarkets are taking the piss.”

BR I E F S

Hundreds of thousands join Istanbul rally ISTANBUL: Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators rallied on Saturday in Istanbul in defence of democracy after the arrest of mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkiye’s worst street unrest in over a decade. Turkish flags and pictures of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, modern Turkiye’s founding father. Imamoglu was resoundingly re-elected mayor for the third time last year. The anger over his arrest which began in Istanbul quickly spread across Turkiye. A large crowd rallying in support of Imanoglu in Maltepe on the outskirts of Istanbul on Saturday. – AFPPIC

the ones who feel most anxiety about the future. “The youth are telling Recep Tayyip Erdogan: Show the people respect. Don’t touch the nation’s will. Don’t cheat – compete fairly. But Erdogan is closing his ears to these voices,” he wrote. “This is not about Ekrem Imamoglu, it’s about our country ... It is about justice, democracy and freedom.” Speaking to French newspaper Le Monde , Ozel said there would be rallies every Saturday in different cities and Wednesday night demo in Istanbul. “If we don’t stop this attempted coup, it will mean the end of the ballot box,” he said. “I joined the rallies outside City Hall for four days together with university students. I told them not to give in,” said protester Cafer Sungur, 78. “There is no other way than to keep fighting. “I was jailed in the 1970s but back then there was justice. Today we can’t talk about justice any more.” – AFP

Nightly protests outside Istanbul City Hall drew vast crowds and often degenerated into running battles with riot police, who used teargas, pepper spray and rubber bullets to disperse the protesters. “We are here today for our homeland. We, the people, elect our rulers,”insisted 17-year-old Melis Basak Ergun, a young protester who vowed they would never be cowed “by violence or tear gas”. “We stand behind our mayor, Imamoglu.” Turkish authorities did not comment on the latest mass protest. Erdogan has previously branded the demonstrations “street terror”. In a letter read out to the crowd, Imamoglu addressed Turkiye’s youngsters, saying: “If young people are on the front line, it’s because they’re

Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkiye’s biggest city. Ozgur Ozel, leader of the main opposition party CHP which organised the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd. The mass protests, which began with Imamoglu’s March 19 detention on contested fraud and “terror” charges, have prompted a repressive government response that has been condemned by rights groups and drawn criticism from abroad. Imamoglu was elected as CHP’s candidate for the 2028 race on the day he was jailed. As his wife, Dilek, arrived on stage, massive applause arose from the crowd which was a sea of