12/05/2026

TUESDAY | MAY 12, 2026

READ OUR

HERE

8

Malaysian Paper

/thesun

Africa-France summit aims to clinch new deals

AUSTRALIA TO QUARANTINE EVACUEES CANBERRA: Australians repatriated from the cruise ship MV Hondius will undergo quarantine at a facility in Perth for at least three weeks, Health Minister Mark Butler said yesterday, confirming that none had shown symptoms. Four Australian citizens and one permanent resident are among six departing Tenerife in Spain’s Canary Islands on a government-chartered flight to Perth, the state capital of Western Australia, with medical staff monitoring en route. A New Zealand citizen is included. The group will be transferred to the Bullsbrook quarantine facility. Butler noted that this covers part of hantavirus’s incubation period of up to 42 days. Further advice from the chief health officers will determine whether the quarantine period will be extended beyond three weeks. – Bernama U.S. PASSENGER TESTS MILDLY POSITIVE WASHINGTON: One of 17 American passengers being repatriated from a cruise ship has tested mildly positive for the Andes virus, the US Health Department said on Sunday. “One passenger has mild symptoms and another passenger tested mildly PCR positive for the Andes virus,” the department said. Both passengers are travelling in the plane’s biocontainment units “out of an abundance of caution”, it said. The US passengers evacuated from the Canary Islands, where the ship made a stop, will be taken to a centre in the rural state of Nebraska. The person with mild symptoms will be taken to a second centre. Upon arrival, “each person will undergo clinical assessment and receive appropriate care and support based on their condition”. – AFP FRENCH WOMAN’S CONDITION WORSENS PARIS: A French passenger from the MV Hondius has tested positive for the hantavirus and her condition is deteriorating, French Health Minister Stephanie Rist said yesterday. She was among five French people who were on the ship. The four other passengers tested negative but will be re-tested, she told France Inter radio, adding that so far French authorities have traced 22 contact cases. “What is key, is to act at the start and break the virus transmission chains. This is what we are doing with the prime minister, notably with a decree that will allow us to strengthen isolation measures for contact cases and to protect the population,” she said. Asked if France had enough masks and tests to cope with a potential crisis, Rist said: “Yes, France is ready.” – Reuters BRITISH MAN ‘CLINICALLY IMPROVING’ JOHANNESBURG: A British man who was admitted to a hospital in Johannesburg after falling ill aboard a luxury cruise ship is “clinically improving”, a South African Health Ministry spokesperson said yesterday. “The British patient is clinically improving but still ill,” the spokesperson Foster Mohale said. “This means his condition is improving, gradually so.” No vaccines or specific treatments exist for hantavirus, which is a known but rare illness that usually spreads among rodents. Health officials have insisted that the risk to global public health is low and dismissed comparisons to the Covid-19 pandemic. – Reuters

BR I E F S

o Kenya wants outcomes discussed at G7

NAIROBI: French President Emmanuel Macron and more than 30 African leaders kicked off a summit in Kenya yesterday aimed at diversifying Paris’ partnerships on the continent and clinching new investment deals. The Africa Forward Summit is the first France has organised in an English-speaking nation since it began holding such events in the 1970s and follows setbacks in former colonies in West Africa that have moved to reduce French influence. The convention opened with a meeting of business executives attended by Macron and Kenyan President William Ruto at the University of Nairobi. In addition to more than 30 African presidents, deputy presidents and prime ministers, attendees included executives from leading French firms such as TotalEnergies and Orange and Africa’s richest man, the Nigerian industrialist Aliko Dangote. During a state visit on Sunday, Macron announced that French shipping group CMA CGM planned to invest €700 million (RM3.2 billion) to modernise a terminal at the Kenyan port of Mombasa. Kenya hopes to use the summit to attract French investors looking to take advantage of the pan-African free trade area, which is being rolled out across the continent. Ruto also wants to advance talks on making the global financial system fairer to heavily indebted African countries, a campaign France has pledged to support. The Kenyan president will attend the G7 summit next month in Evian-les-Bains at the invitation of France, which holds the group’s rotating presidency. “We believe it’s a good thing if critical outcomes of this meeting ... can also be mainstreamed as critical agenda items by the Portrait of a Young Girl , by Dutch artist Toon Kelder, had likely been hanging for decades in the home of descendants of Hendrik Seyffardt, Brand said, describing it as “the most bizarre case of my entire career”. The case has drawn parallels to a find that made headlines last year, when an 18th-century Nazi-looted painting, also from the collection of late Jewish art dealer Jacques Goudstikker, featured in a property ad in Argentina. In the Dutch case, Brand said he was approached by a man who had recently uncovered two horrifying secrets: he was a descendant of Seyffardt, and his family had displayed the looted art for years. This family member, who wished to remain anonymous, told Brand he saw the painting hanging in the hallway of the granddaughter of Seyffardt. According to Brand, Seyffardt’s granddaughter told the family member the painting was “Jewish looted art, stolen from Goudstikker. It is unsellable. Don’t tell anyone”. But the family member wanted the story to go public, so contacted Brand, who has made a

Macron takes the floor at Taifa Hall, University of Nairobi. – REUTERSPIC

Diomaye Faye said French bases were incompatible with the country’s sovereignty. At a news conference with Ruto on Sunday, Macron downplayed the absence of some leaders at the summit. He noted that several West African heads of state, including Faye, would be there and said France was still seeking connections with people from those countries. “We can disagree with some of these governments ... but we never disagree with people,” he said. – Reuters

G7,” said Kenyan Foreign Minister Musalia Mudavadi. France has traditionally had its closest African ties in its former colonies in the west and centre of the continent but is confronting rising anti French sentiment. Coups since 2020 in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger brought to power military officers who expelled French troops. France also handed over control of its last major military facility in Senegal last July after Senegalese President Bassirou

Nazi-looted portrait found in Dutch home THE HAGUE: An artwork plundered by the Nazis from the world-famous Goudstikker collection has surfaced in the family of an SS collaborator in the Netherlands, Dutch art detective Arthur Brand said yesterday. name for himself cracking high-profile cases of stolen art. This family member told De Telegraaf daily: “I feel ashamed. The painting should be returned to the heirs of Goudstikker.”

The grandmother, quoted by the Dutch daily, said the family was discussing whether the painting should be returned to the Goudstikker heirs, and denied knowing it was looted. “I received it from my mother. Now that you confront me like this, I understand that Goudstikker’s heirs want the painting back. I didn’t know that,” she was quoted as saying. Brand launched his own investigation. The painting has a Goudstikker label on the back and the number 92 carved into the frame. He searched the archives of an auction in 1940 where part of the looted Goudstikker collection went under the hammer and found item number 92: Portrait of a Young Girl by Toon Kelder. Lawyers for the Goudstikker heirs confirmed to Brand that this painting was looted. The family member who contacted Brand also wants the painting returned to the Goudstikker heirs, but the police are powerless as the theft has passed the statute of limitations. The Dutch Restitution Committee, which advises on looted Nazi art, is also hamstrung as it cannot compel private individuals to return artworks. – AFP

This handout photograph of the portrait was released by Brand yesterday. – AFPPIC