Indonesia breaks ground for first foreign investment projects in new capital

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Updated 25 September 2024
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Indonesia breaks ground for first foreign investment projects in new capital

Indonesia breaks ground for first foreign investment projects in new capital
  • The three foreign investment projects in Nusantara were worth about $63 million
  • Indonesian government planned 80 percent of the $32-billion project to be funded by private sector

JAKARTA: Indonesia’s outgoing President Joko Widodo broke ground on Wednesday for Australian, Russian and Chinese projects in the country’s future capital Nusantara, marking the first foreign investment in his administration’s flagship $32-billion initiative.

Southeast Asia’s largest economy is relocating its capital to East Kalimantan on Borneo island to replace the overcrowded and sinking Jakarta on Java island, with the megaproject scheduled for completion in 2045.

“This morning, we broke ground for education investment from Australia. Then we also broke ground for property development by Russian investors. And … we are about to do another groundbreaking (project) for a mixed-use property development from Delonix Nusantara, from Chinese investors,” Widodo said during a livestreamed ceremony in Nusantara.

“The foreign investments that are coming in are giving us the belief and confidence that Nusantara is an extremely attractive location for investments.”

Chinese property firm Delonix Group is investing $33 million in the complex of hotels, office and community retail spaces in Nusantara.

The Australian Independent School and Russia’s property developer Magnum Estate are two other investors working with local partners and investing around $9.9 million and $19.8 million in Nusantara, respectively.

Since Widodo unveiled his plan in 2019, the new capital project has faced construction delays and struggled to attract the hoped-for foreign assignment. The mammoth undertaking is expected to mostly rely on private investors, with government funding planned to cover 20 percent of the total expenditure.

The government has so far signed many letters of intent, Widodo said, but officials are carefully choosing projects to “adjust them to the needs of Nusantara.”

The new capital that has been widely seen as the president’s attempt to seal his legacy previously received a $1.3 billion investment from a consortium of Indonesian companies.

Widodo has said he is planning to spend the last weeks of his second and final term in office there. His successor, President-Elect Prabowo Subianto, will take office on Oct. 20.


Trump aide warns Zelensky to stop hurling ‘insults’, start negotiating

Trump aide warns Zelensky to stop hurling ‘insults’, start negotiating
Updated 7 sec ago
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Trump aide warns Zelensky to stop hurling ‘insults’, start negotiating

Trump aide warns Zelensky to stop hurling ‘insults’, start negotiating
  • Pressure builds on Volodymyr Zelensky to sign away precious mineral rights in exchange for Washington’s help defending against Russia
  • Tensions between Trump and Zelensky over the proposed mineral deal and Washington’s outreach to Moscow have exploded this week
KYIV: The US national security adviser warned Ukraine’s leader to stop hurling “insults” at Donald Trump, as pressure built Friday on Volodymyr Zelensky to sign away precious mineral rights in exchange for Washington’s help defending against Russia.
Tensions between Trump and Zelensky over the proposed mineral deal — which Kyiv has rejected — and Washington’s outreach to Moscow have exploded this week in a series of barbs traded at press conferences and on social media.
Zelensky has warned that Trump has succumbed to Russian “disinformation,” while the US leader has accused his counterpart of starting the war and branded him a “dictator without elections.”
“Some of the rhetoric coming out of Kyiv, frankly, and insults to President Trump were unacceptable,” US national security adviser Mike Waltz told a Thursday briefing at the White House.
“President Trump is obviously very frustrated right now with President Zelensky, the fact that he hasn’t come to the table, that he hasn’t been willing to take this opportunity that we have offered,” he said.
The United States is a vital financial and military supporter of Ukraine, but Trump has rattled Kyiv and its European backers by opening talks with Moscow they fear could end the war on terms that reward Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The spat has turned personal with Trump falsely claiming Zelensky is hugely unpopular among his own people and the Ukrainian leader saying Trump lives in a Russian “disinformation space.”
Tech tycoon and Trump backer Elon Musk weighed in Thursday, saying Ukrainians “despised” their president and that the US leader was right to leave him out of talks with Russia.
Amid the war of words, Zelensky said Thursday he had held a “productive meeting” with US envoy Keith Kellogg in Kyiv.
“We had a detailed conversation about the battlefield situation, how to return our prisoners of war, and effective security guarantees,” Zelensky said on social media after the meeting.
“Strong Ukraine-US relations benefit the entire world,” he added.
However, there was no joint press conference or statements after the discussions, as would typically accompany such a visit.
Trump is calling for Kyiv to hand over access to its mineral wealth as compensation for tens of billions of dollars in US aid delivered under his predecessor Joe Biden.
Zelensky rejected a deal proposed by Trump as it did not include “security guarantees” — Kyiv’s key demand from its Western backers in any agreement with Russia to halt the fighting.
The feud marks a dramatic reversal from US policy under Biden, who lauded Zelensky as a hero, shipped vast supplies of arms to Kyiv and hammered Moscow with sanctions.
Trump has instead criticized Zelensky and blamed him for starting the war that began with Russia’s full-scale invasion three years ago.
“A Dictator without Elections, Zelensky better move fast or he is not going to have a Country left,” he wrote on his Truth Social platform on Wednesday.
Zelensky was elected in 2019 for a five-year term and has remained leader in line with Ukrainian rules under martial law, imposed as his country fights for its survival.
While Zelensky’s popularity has fallen, the percentage of Ukrainians who trust him has never dipped below 50 percent since the conflict started, according to the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS).
Trump’s invective drew shock reactions from Europe.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said it was “wrong and dangerous” to call Zelensky a dictator.
The White House said France’s Emmanuel Macron and Britain’s Keir Starmer will visit Trump next week after European leaders held emergency summits in recent days over how to deal with Trump’s threats to overhaul decades of transatlantic security ties.
The Kremlin, buoyed by its rapprochement with Washington, has hailed Trump’s comments.
Russia, which for years has railed against the US military presence in Europe, wants a reorganization of the continent’s security framework as part of any deal to end the Ukraine fighting.
Putin said Wednesday that US allies “only have themselves to blame for what’s happening,” suggesting they were paying the price for opposing Trump’s return to the White House.
Neither Kyiv nor European countries were invited to high-level talks between top diplomats from Russia and the US in Saudi Arabia earlier this week, deepening fears they are being sidelined.

Survivors of past air disasters offer support after Toronto crash

Survivors of past air disasters offer support after Toronto crash
Updated 1 min 57 sec ago
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Survivors of past air disasters offer support after Toronto crash

Survivors of past air disasters offer support after Toronto crash
  • Survivors of past aviation accidents are offering advice and support to the 80 passengers and crew members of the plane that crashed and flipped over in Toronto
  • The National Air Disaster Alliance was created in 1995 to support survivors and victims’ families and advocate for safety improvements

CONCORD: Sad. Happy. Anguished. Guilty.
Denise Lockie of Charlotte, North Carolina, has felt all of the above in recent weeks, as a string of major aviation accidents brought back memories of crash-landing in an icy river in New York. Sixteen years after the “Miracle on the Hudson,” she and other aviation disaster survivors stand ready to support those who are just emerging from their ordeal in Toronto on Monday.
“Right now, they haven’t even processed what has happened,” Lockie said of the 80 passengers and crew members who survived when Delta Air Lines flight 4819 crashed and flipped over at Pearson International Airport.
There were no survivors when a commercial jetliner and an Army helicopter collided in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 29, a medical transportation plane crashed in Philadelphia on Jan. 31 and a plane carrying 10 people crashed in Alaska on Feb. 6. But in Toronto, not only did no one die, the last of the injured were released from the hospital Thursday.
“It’s amazing,” said passenger Peter Carlson, who spoke at a conference less than 48 hours after the crash. Though he managed to crack a joke — “Nothing beats a good road trip besides an airplane crash” — he later admitted struggling to leave his hotel room.
“I was quite emotional about this whole thing and just really want to be home,” said Carlson, the newest member of what retired flight attendant Sandy Purl calls a “sad sorority and fraternity.”
A history of survival
Monday’s crash in Toronto wasn’t the first time lives were spared during a major aviation disaster there: In 2005, all 309 people on board Air France Flight 358 survived after it overran the runway and burst into flames.
In 1989, 184 of the 296 people aboard United Airlines Flight 232 survived a crash in Sioux City, Iowa. And in 1977, Purl was one of 22 survivors when Southern Airways Flight 242 lost both engines in a hailstorm and crashed in New Hope, Georgia. Sixty-three people aboard the plane died, along with nine on the ground.
“Immediately you have a euphoria because you survived,” said Purl, now 72. “But then you go into what’s known as psychic numbing, which protects you from everything that’s in your brain that you can’t bring to the surface for a long time down the road, if ever.”
For more than a year after the crash, Purl’s strategy was to flee whenever anyone mentioned the disaster. Eventually she was admitted to a psychiatric hospital where she told the staff, “I can’t stop crying.”
A kindly doctor took her hand and reassured her what she was feeling was real.
“For the first time, a year and a half later, people weren’t saying, ‘You look so good! Get on with your life, you’re so lucky to be alive,’” she said. “For the first time, someone gave me permission to feel and to cry and to feel safe.”
Survivors stick together
Both Purl and Lockie are members of the National Air Disaster Alliance, which was created in 1995 to support survivors and victims’ families and advocate for safety improvements.
In 2009, the group published an open letter to the 155 passengers and crew members of US Airways flight 1549 after Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger famously landed the plane in the Hudson River after a bird strike disabled both engines.
“We are grateful and thankful that all survived, but survivors need time to process and comprehend what it means to be an air crash survivor,” the group wrote, encouraging survivors to rest, retreat, rely on others and reserve their rights to privacy.
Paying it forward, Lockie is offering similar advice to those aboard the Toronto flight. She described being in a fog for about eight weeks after her crash, struggling to keep up with her corporate job as her injuries healed and being beset by nightmares and panic attacks.
“Absolutely number one as far as I’m concerned is taking to somebody who can understand,” she said. “I think Delta is a fantastic airline and I’m sure their care team is fantastic, but then again, how many people on those care teams have actually been involved in an aviation incident?”
Friends and family might urge survivors to move on with their lives, she said, but “it just doesn’t work that way.”
“You might have fears that come out later on, and you really have to be able to deal with those,” she said. “So my recommendation is to take all the help you can possibly take.”
It doesn’t take much to trigger memories
While Lockie said her experience hasn’t deterred her from flying often, it has shaped her behavior in other ways. When she enters a store or restaurant, for example, she always checks for the fastest way out.
“You have to be able to calm yourself if there’s something that triggers your emotional aptitude,” she said.
Purl, who returned to work as a flight attendant four years after the crash, said she can be triggered by the smell of gasoline or seeing news footage of other crashes.
“I look at the TV and I see my crash,” she said. “I smell it. I taste it. I see the black smoke and I can’t get through it. I feel the heat of the fire.”
The Toronto survivors may find their experience exacerbates underlying traumas, she said.
“Like the layers of an onion, you pull one back and there’s another layer underneath,” she said.
Her advice: Live one day at a time, seek out people who offer unconditional love and talk, talk, talk.
“And then find a way to make a difference as a result,” she said.


Luigi Mangione set for first court appearance since his arraignment in UnitedHealthcare CEO’s death

Luigi Mangione set for first court appearance since his arraignment in UnitedHealthcare CEO’s death
Updated 8 min 26 sec ago
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Luigi Mangione set for first court appearance since his arraignment in UnitedHealthcare CEO’s death

Luigi Mangione set for first court appearance since his arraignment in UnitedHealthcare CEO’s death
  • The 26-year-old has pleaded not guilty to multiple counts of murder, including murder as an act of terrorism, in the Dec. 4 killing of Brian Thompson

NEW YORK: The man accused of fatally shooting the CEO of UnitedHealthcare in New York City and leading authorities on a five-day manhunt is scheduled to be in court Friday for the first time since his December arraignment on state murder and terror charges.
Luigi Mangione, 26, is set for a hearing in state court in Manhattan. Prosecutors and Mangione’s defense lawyers are expected to provide updates on the status of the case and Judge Gregory Carro could set deadlines for pretrial paperwork and possibly even a trial date.
Mangione has pleaded not guilty to multiple counts of murder, including murder as an act of terrorism, in the Dec. 4 killing of Brian Thompson outside a midtown Manhattan hotel. The executive was ambushed and shot on a sidewalk as he walked to an investor conference.
Mangione also faces federal charges that could carry the possibility of the death penalty. He is being held in a Brooklyn federal jail alongside several other high-profile defendants, including Sean “Diddy” Combs and Sam Bankman-Fried.
Prosecutors have said the two cases will proceed on parallel tracks, with the state charges expected to go to trial first. The maximum sentence for the state charges is life in prison without parole. A Feb. 24 hearing in Pennsylvania on charges of possessing an unlicensed firearm, forgery and providing false identification to police was canceled.
In a statement posted on a website for his legal defense, Mangione said: “I am overwhelmed by — and grateful for — everyone who has written me to share their stories and express their support. Powerfully, this support has transcended political, racial, and even class divisions.”
Mangione was arrested in a Pennsylvania McDonald’s on Dec. 9. Police said he was carrying a gun that matched the one used in the shooting and a fake ID. He also was carrying a notebook expressing hostility toward the health insurance industry and especially wealthy executives, authorities said.
Defense lawyer Karen Friedman Agnifilo argued at his Dec. 23 arraignment that “warring jurisdictions” had turned Mangione into a “human ping-pong ball.”
She accused New York City Mayor Eric Adams and other government officials of tainting the jury pool by bringing Mangione back to Manhattan in a choreographed spectacle involving heavily armed officers escorting him up a pier from a heliport.
Friedman Agnifilo singled out Adams’ comment on a local TV station that he wanted to be there to look “him in the eye and say, ‘you carried out this terroristic act in my city.’”


US sends migrants from Guantanamo to Venezuela

US sends migrants from Guantanamo to Venezuela
Updated 18 min 18 sec ago
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US sends migrants from Guantanamo to Venezuela

US sends migrants from Guantanamo to Venezuela
  • A plane left the US base and deposited the 177 people in Honduras, where they were picked up by the Venezuelan government
  • The deportees then left for Venezuela on a flag carrier Conviasa flight that arrived in Maiquetia late Thursday

MAIQUETIA, Venezuela: The United States deported 177 migrants from its military base in Guantanamo, Cuba to their homeland in Venezuela Thursday, the latest sign of cooperation between the long-feuding governments.
Officials in Washington and Caracas confirmed that a plane left the US base and deposited the 177 people in Honduras, where they were picked up by the Venezuelan government.
The deportees then left for Venezuela on a flag carrier Conviasa flight that arrived in Maiquetia late Thursday.
Venezuelan Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello received the all-male group of deportees at the airport, telling them: “Welcome to the homeland.”
“Those who returned, in theory, are all Venezuelans who were in Guantanamo,” Cabello told journalists, adding that another deportation flight was expected to arrive at the end of the week.
The carefully choreographed operation would have seemed impossible just weeks ago when the United States accused President Nicolas Maduro of stealing an election.
But since President Donald Trump entered office four weeks ago, relations have thawed, with the White House prioritizing immigration cooperation.
Maduro said the handover was at the “direct request” of his government to that of Trump.
“We have rescued 177 new migrants from Guantanamo,” he said at an official event.
Trump envoy Richard Grenell traveled to Caracas on January 31 and met Maduro, who is the subject of a $25 million US bounty for his arrest.
Grenell brokered the release of six US prisoners. A day later Trump announced Venezuela had agreed to accept illegal migrants deported from the United States.
Venezuela said it had “requested the repatriation of a group of compatriots who were unjustly taken to the Guantanamo naval base.”
“This request has been accepted and the citizens have been transferred to Honduras, from where they will be recovered,” the government said in a statement.
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement confirmed they had transported “177 Venezuelan illegal aliens from Guantanamo Bay to Honduras today for pickup by the Venezuelan government.”
Caracas broke off ties with Washington in January 2019 after The United States recognized then-opposition leader Juan Guaido as “interim president” following 2018 elections that were widely rejected as neither free nor fair.
In October 2023, Maduro allowed US planes with deported migrants to fly into Venezuela but withdrew permission four months later.
His government has been flying free or subsidized repatriation flights for Venezuelans wishing to return home.
Venezuela is keen to end crippling US sanctions and to move beyond the controversy over elections last July that the United States and numerous other countries said were won by the opposition.
The contested election results sparked protests in which at least 28 people were killed and about 200 injured, with 2,400 arrests.
Human rights groups in the United States have sued to gain access to migrants held in Guantanamo after Trump ordered the base to prepare to receive some 30,000 people who entered the United States without papers.
Guantanamo is synonymous with abuses against terror suspects held there after the September 11 attacks.
The United States on Thursday deported another group of 135 migrants of various nationalities – including 65 children – to Costa Rica, from where they will be repatriated to their home countries, including China, Russia, Afghanistan, Ghana and Vietnam, the government in San Jose said.
Costa Rica, along with Panama, is serving as a way station for migrants deported by Trump’s government.


UK foreign secretary questions Russia’s ‘appetite’ for peace at tense G20 meet

UK foreign secretary questions Russia’s ‘appetite’ for peace at tense G20 meet
Updated 38 min 4 sec ago
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UK foreign secretary questions Russia’s ‘appetite’ for peace at tense G20 meet

UK foreign secretary questions Russia’s ‘appetite’ for peace at tense G20 meet
  • G20 gathering comes days after landmark bilateral talks between the US and Russia over ending the war in Ukraine
  • Those talks sidelined Washington’s European allies and Ukraine, who were not involved

JOHANNESBURG: UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy said he saw no appetite for peace from Russia in Ukraine after listening to a speech by Russia’s top diplomat at a tense Group of 20 meeting in South Africa on Thursday.
Lammy was speaking to reporters after Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov addressed other senior diplomats in a closed-door session at the G20 foreign ministers meeting in Johannesburg.
“I have to say when I listened to what the Russians and what Lavrov have just said in the chamber this afternoon, I don’t see an appetite to really get to that peace,” Lammy said.
Lammy said Lavrov left his seat in the meeting room when it was Lammy’s turn to speak. No details of Lavrov’s speech were released.
The two-day G20 gathering on Thursday and Friday comes days after landmark bilateral talks between the United States and Russia over ending the war in Ukraine. Those talks sidelined Washington’s European allies and Ukraine, who weren’t involved.
US President Donald Trump has further upended the West’s position by criticizing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and falsely blaming Ukraine for the full-scale invasion by Russia. The war’s third anniversary is next week.
“At the moment, we’ve had talks effectively about talks,” Lammy said. “We’ve not got anywhere near a negotiated settlement.”
In his own speech, which was released by the UK Foreign Office, Lammy criticized Russia for what he called “Tsarist imperialism.”
“You know, mature countries learn from their colonial failures and their wars, and Europeans have had much to learn over the generations and the centuries,” Lammy said, according to the transcript from the UK Foreign Office. “But I’m afraid to say that Russia has learned nothing.”
“I was hoping to hear some sympathy for the innocent victims of the aggression. I was hoping to hear some readiness to seek a durable peace. What I heard was the logic of imperialism dressed up as a realpolitik, and I say to you all, we should not be surprised, but neither should we be fooled.”
Lammy referred to Lavrov’s speech as “the Russian gentleman’s tired fabrications.”
Tensions at the meeting were underlined when a photo opportunity for the foreign ministers to pose together for pictures was canceled with no reason given.
The United Kingdom, France, Germany and the European Union have all pledged continued support for Ukraine and were expected to reinforce that position at the G20 meeting.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who led those talks with Lavrov in Saudi Arabia this week, was a high-profile absentee from the meeting. Rubio boycotted amid US tensions with host South Africa over some of its policies, which the Trump administration has labeled anti-American. The US was represented by Dana Brown, its acting ambassador to South Africa.
The G20 is made up of 19 of the world’s major economies, the European Union and the African Union. Others attending the meeting in South Africa included EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot, who repeated France’s condemnation of Russia in an op-ed published by several media outlets.
The Russian Foreign Ministry did release details of a bilateral meeting Lavrov held with China’s Wang. Afterwards, Lavrov said Russia’s relations with China “have become and remain an increasingly significant factor in stabilizing the international situation and preventing it from sliding into total confrontation,” according to a statement from the ministry.
The G20 is supposed to bring developed and developing countries together to foster global cooperation. But the grouping often struggles to reach any meaningful consensus because of the disparate interests of the US, Europe, Russia and China. Cooperation was further undermined by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
South Africa holds the G20’s rotating presidency this year and in a speech opening the meeting, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said that it was an opportunity for the G20 “to engage in serious dialogue” against a backdrop of geopolitical tensions and war, climate change, pandemics and energy and food insecurity.
“There is a lack of consensus among major powers, including in the G20, on how to respond to these issues,” Ramaphosa said.
Rubio’s decision to boycott and his pledge to also skip the main G20 summit in South Africa in November threatens to further undermine the G20’s effectiveness.
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent also said that he won’t attend a G20 finance ministers meeting in South Africa next week because of commitments in Washington, which many saw as another indication of Trump’s indifference to international collaboration in favor of his “America First” policy.