Sometimes girls as young as 9 fit for marriage: Malaysian MP

April 6, 2017

Kuala Lumpur, Apr 6: A Malaysian MP said girls as young as nine were “physically and spiritually” ready for marriage, as the Muslim-majority Southeast Asian country passed a law on sexual offenses against children without criminalizing child marriage.

shabudinShabudin Yahaya, a member of the Barisan Nasional coalition, made the comments in response to a proposal by an opposition member of Parliament to amend the Sexual Offences Against Children bill to include a ban on child marriages.

The proposal was voted down by the majority of Parliament.

“They reach puberty at the age of nine or 12. And at that time, their body is already akin to them being 18 years old. So physically and spiritually, it is not a barrier for the girl to marry,” Yahaya said on Tuesday during a debate on the bill.

He also said there was “nothing wrong” with a rape victim marrying her rapist as she would then not face a “bleak future.” Yahaya's comments sparked outrage on social media, with some opposition politicians asking for him to be fired.

In a statement on Wednesday, Yahaya said his comments were taken out of context, and that marriage was not a “back door exit to legalize rape.” He said he rejected the motion to ban child marriages as it was contrary to provisions in Shariah law.

Under both civil law and Islamic law, girls and boys younger than 18 can be married. Civil law sets the minimum age of marriage at 18, but those above 16 can be married with the permission of their state's chief minister.

Under Islamic law, children younger than 16 can get married if the Shariah courts allow it. The law passed on Tuesday makes no mention of child marriage.

It criminalizes “grooming” — touching and befriending children as a prelude to sexual abuse — and spells out penalties for making and possessing pornography involving those under 18. A special court will also be set up under the new law to deal with child sexual abuse cases more quickly.

The maximum penalty under the law is a jail term of up to 30 years and six strokes of the whip for making, possessing or distributing child pornography.

The new law comes into effect 10 months after British pedophile Richard Huckle was found guilty of abusing up to 200 babies and children, mostly in Malaysia.

Reuters reported last year that most complaints of child sexual abuse in Malaysia do not lead to successful prosecutions, largely due to weaknesses in the criminal justice system.

Only 140 of the 12,987 cases of child sexual abuse reported to police between 2012 and July 2016 resulted in convictions.

“The law is more stringent now... but not enough,” Teo Nie Ching, the opposition MP who proposed the ban child marriages, told Reuters.

She said offenders would use the absence of a ban on child marriages to get away with crimes as marital rape is not a crime in Malaysia.

There have been several cases over the years of rapists marrying their victims, including those under 18, to avoid prosecution.

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News Network
April 26,2020

Seoul, Apr 26: A train presumed to belong to North Korean's Kim Jong-un has been spotted at a station in the state's eastern coastal town of Wonsan amid speculation about the leader's health, a US monitor said on Sunday, citing commercial satellite imagery on the region, Yonhap news agency reported.

According to 38 North-- a website devoted to analysis about North Korea, the imagery showed a train "probably belonging to Kim Jong Un parked at the Leadership Railway Station servicing his Wonsan compound since at least April 21."

"The approximately 250-metre long train, although partially covered by the station's roof, can be seen at a railway station reserved for use by the Kim family. It was not present on April 15 but was present on both April 21 and 23," it said.

"The train's presence does not prove the whereabouts of the North Korean leader or indicate anything about his health, but it does lend weight to reports that Kim is staying at an elite area on the country's eastern coast," it added.

The report came as rumours about his health have spread as Kim apparently skipped an important annual visit to the Kumsusan Palace of the Sun on the occasion of the April 15 birthday of late state founder and his grandfather, Kim Il-sung.

CNN intensified the speculation by reporting earlier last week that the United States is looking into intelligence that Kim is "in grave danger" after surgery.

Seoul officials have disputed recent media reports about Kim, saying there have been no unusual signs from the North. Some said that Kim is presumed to be staying in Wonsan for unspecified reasons.

Washington has also dismissed the reports, with US President Donald Trump calling such reports "incorrect" in a press briefing late last week.

On Saturday, other media reports stated that China has dispatched a team of medical doctors and officials to North Korea "to advise on" Kim, citing multiple unnamed people familiar with the situation.

North Korea's state media, however, has not made any mention of Kim's public activity for two weeks since he was last seen in April 11 presiding over a major party meeting, though it has reported on his handling of routine state affairs, such as sending diplomatic letters.
But not all speculation has proven to be false.

When he was absent from public for about a month in 2014, speculation arose about his health and a political crisis in the secretive state. He later reemerged with a cane and a limp reportedly after having a cyst removed from his ankle.

The 36-year-old leader is known to have various health problems apparently caused by obesity and heavy smoking. He took office as leader of the communist state after his father, Kim Jong-il, died of a heart attack in late 2011.

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News Network
March 12,2020

Beijing, Mar 12: The number of fresh infections at the epicentre of China's coronavirus epidemic dropped to a new low on Thursday but the country imported more cases from abroad.

Another 11 people died, the lowest daily increase since late January, bringing the toll in China to 3,169 deaths, according to the National Health Commission.

There were only eight new cases in Wuhan, the city where the virus first emerged in December before growing into a national crisis and a pandemic.

It is the first time that new cases in Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province, have fallen to single-digits since figures started to be reported in January.

With cases falling dramatically in recent weeks, authorities this week began to loosen some restrictions on Hubei's 56 million people, who have been under quarantine since late January.

Healthy people living in low-risk areas of the province can now travel within Hubei. While Wuhan is not included, some of the city's companies were told they could resume work.

Only one other non-imported case was recorded elsewhere in the country.

But as global hotspots emerge elsewhere, China fears that cases arriving from abroad could undermine its progress.

On Thursday there were six more imported cases reported, bringing the total of infections from overseas to 85, health officials said.

Beijing has ordered a 14-day quarantine for everyone arriving in the city from any country.

Travellers flying into Beijing Capital International Airport from high-risk countries are now handled separately from other passengers.

A total of 80,793 people have now been infected in China.

President Xi Jinping said this week during his first visit to Wuhan since the crisis erupted that the spread of the disease has been "basically curbed" in China.

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Agencies
August 1,2020

Mexico City, Aug 1: The number of people, who have died of COVID-19 in Mexico, has risen by 688 to 46,688 within the past 24 hours, Deputy Health Minister Hugo Lopez-Gatell said.

The number of victims in Mexico is now higher than in the United Kingdom, where 46,119 people have died of the disease. The largest number of fatalities - 153,311 - has been recorded in the United States, while Brazil comes second with 92,475 deaths.

Lopez-Gatell also said on late Friday that the number of confirmed coronavirus cases had increased by 8,458 to 424,637 over the past day.

A day earlier, the Latin American nation recorded 7,730 new cases of the coronavirus, with 639 fatalities.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) declared the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic on March 11. To date, over 17.5 million people have been infected with the coronavirus worldwide, with over 677,000 fatalities, according to Johns Hopkins University.

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