LONDON, May 13 — Britain will introduce legislation to strengthen its ties with the European ‌Union, as Prime Minister Keir Starmer prioritises mending economic relations with the bloc as he tries to stay in power following growing calls for him to quit.

Outlining the ‌government’s legislative programme in a speech surrounded by pomp, King Charles said would introduce a bill to strengthen ties with the EU.

The European Partnership Bill will be used to implement agreements with the EU “now and in the future,” the government said.

Starmer has been under pressure from some lawmakers to quit after his Labour Party suffered big losses in Scottish, Welsh and local English elections last week, but he has dug in and said that rebuilding the relationship with Europe is central to his ‌plan for the country.

Starmer has sought closer ties with the EU ⁠while trying to avoid relitigating the Brexit ⁠debates ahead of Britain’s departure from the bloc ⁠in 2020.

While his government has ⁠said Britain ⁠needs to align with EU regulations by default in some industries to spur economic growth, Starmer retains a commitment to red lines that Britain will not ⁠return to the EU’s single market or customs union, and will not restore freedom of movement with the bloc.

A year ago Britain and the EU reached a framework to agree new deals on food and drink, emissions trading and electricity, the details of which are still ⁠being negotiated.

The government said the proposed bill would “ensure agreements with the EU can be implemented now and in the future.”

It added that ⁠Britain’s parliament would have a say before EU law was applied in the ⁠UK and ⁠that any new treaties that might be applied under the bill would also be subject to parliamentary approval.

Starmer said in a written introduction to the King’s ‌Speech that removing barriers to growth meant “setting a new direction for Britain at the next EU summit, putting Britain at the heart of Europe.” — Reuters

KUALA LUMPUR, May 13 — The High Court here today granted Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak a stay of execution on the payment of US$1.3 billion awarded to SRC International Sdn Bhd, pending his appeal against the court’s March ruling.

Judge Datuk Ahmad Fairuz Zainol Abidin, now a Court of Appeal judge, ruled that special circumstances justified the stay.

These included the substantial size of the sum awarded against a single individual, the precedent of a stay granted in Najib’s tax case involving RM 1.69 billion, and the fines imposed on him in his criminal cases.

“The factors relevant for consideration are the unprecedented magnitude of the monetary judgment entered against the defendant, the concurrence of equally unprecedented monetary judgment against the defendant in the Inland Revenue Board (IRB) suit, and the criminal liabilities which attract monetary penalties.

“These simultaneous judgments and orders faced by the defendant, when taken together, make up special circumstances on why a stay is to be granted.

“It is best that the case be finally determined at the highest level before any enforcement is allowed,” the judge said.

During a proceeding via Zoom today, Justice Ahmad Fairuz ordered Najib to pay RM2 million in costs to SRC International and RM150,000 each to five third-party defendants named in the suit.

In its March ruling, the court did not specify the costs Najib owes to SRC International and the five third-party defendants he added to the case.

The third-party defendants were former directors Tan Sri Ismee Ismail, Datuk Suboh Md Yassin, Datuk Mohamed Azhar Osman Khairuddin, Datuk Shahrol Azral Ibrahim Halmi and Datuk Che Abdullah @ Rashidi Che Omar

The matter was confirmed by SRC International’s counsel, Luc Choong, following the proceedings. 

On March 31, the court ruled that Najib is liable for SRC International’s US$1.3 billion losses after finding that he had breached his fiduciary duties, abused his position and misappropriated the company’s funds for personal gain.

Justice Ahmad Fairuz, in allowing the company’s US$1.18 billion lawsuit against the former premier, ordered Najib to pay the amount, in addition to US$120 million that he had received from the company into his AmPrivate banking account ending 694, hence bringing the total to US$1.3 billion.

The court also dismissed his claims against the third-party defendants with costs, ruling that, having exercised control over the company, Najib could not subsequently shift liability onto the very individuals he directed merely because they formally executed his decisions.

SRC sued Najib in May 2021, alleging breach of fiduciary duties, abuse of power and misappropriation of company funds for personal gain. — Bernama 

LUMUT, May 13 — On day three of the operation, authorities expanded the search radius to 343 nautical square miles for seven Indonesian undocumented migrants still missing after a boat capsized off Pulau Pangkor. 

State Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency (MMEA) director, Maritime Capt Mohamad Shukri Khotob, said the expanded area focuses on potential zones identified from earlier recoveries.

“Today’s search focuses north of Pulau Pangkor, based on evidence that victims drifted there. As of 2.30pm on day three, no bodies have been found.

But MMEA Perak, the Marine Police Force and Royal Malaysian Navy continue to intensify searches in designated sectors,” he told reporters at the Kampung Acheh Marine Police Jetty today.

Mohamad Shukri said sea currents pose a major challenge, potentially carrying victims far from where the boat capsized, adding that today’s search would continue until 7pm and resume tomorrow.

“Tomorrow’s operation will run from 7am to 7pm with the same assets, though we may expand the search area as needed,” he said.

To date, 30 victims have been located: 23 rescued alive and seven found dead over the three-day operation.

Yesterday, Perak MMEA reported rescuing 23 Indonesian migrants after their boat capsized off Pulau Pangkor near Lumut, on Monday.

The boat is believed to have been carrying 37 undocumented Indonesian migrants and was operated by a Myanmar crew.

It departed Kisaran, Indonesia, on May 9 for Malaysia, believed to be heading to Penang, Terengganu, Selangor and Kuala Lumpur. — Bernama

SINGAPORE, May 13 – H&M has announced a major restructuring of its Asia-Pacific operations, relocating its South-east Asia regional headquarters from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur and eliminating approximately 30 per cent of its regional support workforce.

The changes, formally communicated to staff on May 11 will see the majority of redundancies take place in the Singapore office. Out of a regional headcount of 256 for the former East Asia region, 78 positions will be removed.

The restructuring is part of a broader evolution of H&M’s commercial operating model, which replaces existing regional layers with four new continents. Under the new structure, the newly formed Continent Asia Pacific (APAC) will be based in Shanghai and will oversee five sales markets.

As a result, the head office for the South-east Asia sales market will be located in Kuala Lumpur, while the Northeast Asia sales market will relocate to Tokyo. The APAC continent portfolio also includes India (hub in Bangalore), Australia & New Zealand (Sydney hub), and Greater China, which will share the Shanghai hub with the continent headquarters.

Staff will undergo a calibration process by  May 21, 2026. Employees are required to complete an assessment survey nominating two priority roles, with placement decisions based on 2025 contribution ratings and recent disciplinary records instead of standard CV submissions.

Interviews and evaluations are scheduled between May 25 and June 19. Management has stated that employees will be informed of their final outcomes no later than mid-June. The consolidated structure and staff relocations are expected to be operational by July 1.

For employees whose roles are eliminated or reduced, mutual separation agreements will be proposed if an alternative position cannot be found within the new organisation. Specific details regarding separation packages will be communicated at a later date.

Internal records indicate that H&M implements similar regionalisation or structural changes on approximately an annual basis. While support functions in Singapore and Ho Chi Minh City are being offshored, and offices in Seoul and Manila are being downsized, the company has stated that all store-level operations and retail teams remain unaffected.

The broader restructuring plan was initially referenced during an internal briefing on April 16, 2026.

KUALA LUMPUR, May 13 — Radio Televisyen Malaysia (RTM) will cease broadcasting its television channels on Astro’s platform from July 1 after nearly three decades of collaboration.

In a circular dated May 11, cited by New Straits Times, RTM said the decision followed difficulties between both parties in reaching a pricing agreement that aligns with operational needs and financial capacity.

It said prolonged negotiations over costs and rental rates had made it challenging to finalise a contract acceptable to both sides.

“After many years of cooperation and continuous negotiations regarding the costs and rental rates for these services, it has become difficult at this time to reach a pricing agreement and contract that meet the needs and financial capabilities of both parties,” RTM said in the circular.

“As such, RTM has decided to terminate the broadcasting services of RTM channels, namely TV1-HD, TV2-HD and Okey, on Astro’s satellite platform and over-the-top (OTT) platform operated by your party. This termination will take effect on July 1, 2026.”

RTM has worked with Astro since 1996 for TV1 and TV2 broadcasts, while its third channel Okey — formerly known as Muzik Aktif and TVi — was added in 2009.

The collaboration also extended to joint production efforts, which RTM said had benefited audiences across both platforms.

RTM said rising channel rental costs had increased its financial burden in leasing the channels, making it more appropriate to end the service.

“As the channel rental costs continue to increase… it is more appropriate for us to terminate the service…” it said.

KUALA LUMPUR, May 13 — The National Registration Department (JPN) has assured that the rollout of the new MyKad Structure will not affect the distribution of government assistance to the public.

In a statement today, JPN said the transition and replacement of identity cards to the new MyKad Structure, which will be implemented this month, will not disrupt the redemption of government aid using MyKad, including Sumbangan Asas Rahmah (SARA) and Budi Madani RON95 (Budi95).

It said the list of existing beneficiaries in the system will remain intact and no recipients will be left out during the replacement process.

The statement was issued in response to concerns over possible technical disruptions or the omission of names from aid recipient lists following the rollout of the new MyKad Structure.

JPN said it has established close cooperation with various ministries and aid-disbursing agencies to ensure data integrity remains intact.

It said the migration process will take place automatically within a central database system, ensuring aid continues to be received by eligible recipients.

The new security features on the MyKad Structure will also strengthen identity verification processes, it added, noting that the new card will continue to support the existing ecosystem used for subsidies and assistance distribution.

JPN said it understands public concern, particularly among vulnerable groups who depend on government aid, and stressed that its focus is to strengthen identity security without making it more difficult for the public to receive assistance.

It also advised the public not to be misled by rumours or false information claiming that aid will be stopped if the card is not replaced immediately.

The replacement process will be carried out in stages, with further details on application procedures to be announced later.

For enquiries, the public can refer to JPN’s official website at www.jpn.gov.my or its official social media channels.

When you think of outer space, you’re likely picturing stars, planets and moons. But much of space is filled with clouds of gas, plasma and stardust – known as interstellar clouds.

In the local parts of our galaxy alone there’s a complex of roughly 15 individual interstellar clouds. The Solar System is currently traversing one of them, aptly named the Local Interstellar Cloud. The origin and history of these clouds are believed to be tightly connected to the birth and death of stars. But we can see their imprints right here on Earth, in a place you might not expect – Antarctic ice.

My colleagues and I have been studying stardust trapped in old Antarctic snow and ice to trace the history of our solar neighbourhood, including the Solar System itself.

In a new study published in Physical Review Letters, we found a subtle clue that reveals our Solar System’s movement through the local interstellar environment over the past 80,000 years.

Looking down to see the sky

Astronomy usually looks outward. Telescopes collect light from distant stars and galaxies, allowing us to observe events across vast stretches of space and time. From these observations, we infer how stars live and die, how elements are formed, and how the universe evolves.

Our approach turns that idea on its head.

Instead of observing the light coming to us, we study the debris of exploding stars right here on Earth. As cosmic furnaces, stars forge many elements in their cores, from carbon and oxygen to calcium and iron. This includes rare isotopes (variants of chemical elements) such as iron-60.

When massive stars explode into supernovae at the end of their life, these elements are ejected into space and become interstellar dust.

Tiny grains of this dust then drift through the galaxy and occasionally find their way to Earth’s surface. Radioactive iron-60, a fingerprint of stellar explosions, is embedded within these grains. By searching for these atoms in geological archives on Earth, we can probe astrophysical events like supernovae long after their light has faded.

This is why Antarctica is so valuable. Its snow accumulates slowly and remains largely undisturbed, forming a layered record that stretches back tens of thousands of years. Each layer captures a snapshot of the material that was present in our cosmic neighbourhood at the time.

Finding stardust in Antarctic ice

When we studied 500kg of recent snow in Antarctica, we unexpectedly found this rare radioactive isotope. Where did it come from? There was no recent near-Earth supernova.

But our solar neighbourhood is filled with 15 clouds, with the Solar System currently traversing at least one of them. Is the stardust waiting in the clouds to be picked up by Earth? If yes, then the amount of stardust Earth collects should be related to their structure: the denser the clouds, the more iron-60 they contain. This was our educated guess in 2019.

Soon, other explanations were brought forward. Millions of years ago Earth received large showers of iron-60 from massive supernovae. Is the iron-60 in Antarctic snow the last remnant or an echo of this signal? A rain that became a drizzle?

To find out, we analysed a 300kg section of Antarctic ice, dating from 40,000 to 80,000 years ago. The process is painstaking. The ice needs to be melted and chemically treated to isolate tiny amounts of iron, including the iron-60 from the stardust.

Then, using the sensitive atom counting technique of accelerator mass spectrometry at the Heavy-Ion Accelerator Facility at Australian National University, we counted individual atoms of iron-60.

The expectation was straightforward: based on previous measurements from surface snow of Antarctica and several thousand-year-old ocean sediments, we anticipated a certain steady level of iron-60 deposition.

Instead, we found less. Not zero, but noticeably lower than expected.

This result suggests that less interstellar dust was reaching Earth during that period. This is a remarkable change on a comparatively short astrophysical timescale and does not fit the long timescales of the iron-60 deposits that landed here millions of years ago. Instead, we needed to look for a smaller, more local source for the isotope.

A fitting story

Naturally, astronomers are also quite interested in the clouds around the Solar System. Last year, a study reconstructing the history of the clouds arrived at the conclusion that they most likely originated in a stellar explosion. Furthermore, they found the Solar System has been traversing the Local Interstellar Cloud from sometime between 40,000 and 124,000 years ago.

If that’s correct, we would expect that the amount of iron-60 collected on Earth should have changed sometime in the same time period – between 40,000 and 124,000 years ago.

This is exactly what our results showed in Antarctica.

The story doesn’t fit perfectly, though. If these clouds did originate directly from an exploding star, we would expect way more iron-60 than we actually see in Antarctic ice.

Nevertheless, these clouds are imprinted in Earth’s geological record. If we look deeper and analyse even older ice, we might soon unravel the mystery of these local interstellar clouds, revealing their full history and uncertain origins.

Dominik Koll receives funding from the Australian Institute of Nuclear Science and Engineering (AINSE).

Notably, the Netherlands has proposed a project on establishing a strategic offshore sand reserve and supply chain management centre for the Mekong Delta.

A recent PM directive set a May 10 deadline for ministries, agencies and localities to complete detailed allocations of the 2026 public investment capital plan.

KUALA LUMPUR, May 13 — The ringgit closed higher against the US dollar and other major currencies today, supported by improved sentiment towards Asian currencies ahead of the high-stakes meeting between United States President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping this week.

At 6pm, the ringgit appreciated to 3.9285/9325 against the greenback from 3.9320/9360 at yesterday’s close.

Bank Muamalat Malaysia Bhd chief economist Mohd Afzanizam Abdul Rashid said Asian currencies were seen strengthening against the US dollar as markets looked forward to the meeting, scheduled for May 14-15, 2026.

“The market appears to be hoping for a positive outcome from the meeting, especially on issues surrounding the war in Iran and the Strait of Hormuz,” he told Bernama.

Nonetheless, Mohd Afzanizam said the situation remained fluid, and market sentiment could easily shift towards risk aversion.

Also, Malaysia’s first quarter (1Q) gross domestic product (GDP) will be announced on Friday, and the Statistics Department Malaysia has projected the Malaysian economy to grow by 5.3 per cent in 1Q 2026.

At the close, the ringgit traded higher against a basket of major currencies.

It appreciated against the Japanese yen to 2.4888/4916 from 2.4952/4979, strengthened versus the British pound to 5.3105/3160 from 5.3231/3286, and bagged against the euro to 4.5987/6034 from 4.6189/6236 at yesterday’s close.

The local currency traded mostly lower against regional peers.

It gained against the Singapore dollar to 3.0872/0906 from 3.0888/0922, but fell against the Indonesian rupiah to 224.7/225.1 from 224.3/224.6, shed against the Philippine peso to 6.40/6.41 from 6.39/6.41, and shaved against the Thai baht to 12.1419/1599 from 12.1276/1455 previously. — Bernama

KUALA LUMPUR, May 13 — Retail prices for RON97, RON95 without subsidy and diesel in Peninsular Malaysia will be lower for the May 14 to 20 period, with RON97 set at RM4.70 per litre, RON95 (without subsidy) at RM3.87 per litre, and diesel at RM4.87 per litre, the Ministry of Finance said.

The ministry said the adjustment was made under the Automatic Pricing Mechanism (APM) following a decline in global market prices, although fuel costs remain elevated compared to pre-conflict levels in West Asia.

It noted that crude oil is still hovering around US$100 per barrel, compared to about US$60 to US$70 before the conflict, with prices also affected by higher logistics and insurance costs as well as risks to supply routes such as the Strait of Hormuz.

“In the current uncertain global market conditions, the Madani government urges the public to continue practising prudent fuel consumption to help extend national supply,” it said in a statement.

Under the revised pricing, RON97 is down 20 sen from RM4.90 per litre, while RON95 without subsidy is down 15 sen from RM4.02 per litre, and diesel in Peninsular Malaysia is down 30 sen from RM5.17 per litre.

The government maintained subsidised prices for targeted groups, with RON95 under Budi95 remaining at RM1.99 per litre, diesel in Sabah, Sarawak and Labuan at RM2.15 per litre, and diesel under SKPS and SKDS at RM2.05 and RM2.15 per litre respectively.

The ministry said it will continue balancing cost-of-living support with fiscal prudence while ensuring stable fuel supply.

MALAYSIA: Malaysia’s Budi95 fuel subsidy began with a 300-litre monthly quota, reduced to 200 litres in March, and may soon drop to 150 litres. Deputy Finance Minister Liew Chin Tong said consumption data shows most Malaysians use less than the current threshold. Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim assured that 90% of RON95 users remain unaffected by the reduction.

Petrol subsidies have become a daily concern among Malaysians as inflation fears intensify. With limited access to public transportation, social media users voice frustration over potential cuts. Speculation surrounding subsidy reductions continues to spread online, fueling widespread dissatisfaction. 

Over on the social media platform X, one user suggested that subsidy cuts stem from reduced fuel usage, though many Malaysians have only lowered spending due to the crisis. He warned that the domestic economy will slow as subsidies shrink, a sentiment echoed widely across social media. Users fear reduced allowances will worsen inflation and place heavier burdens on households already struggling.

Following that, another noted that visiting one’s hometown could easily exhaust the subsidy quota. He highlighted that Malaysia’s high car prices, once justified by cheaper fuel, now worsen the burden. Social media users also compared Kuala Lumpur’s inadequate public transport system to Bangkok and Singapore, stressing that reduced subsidies combined with poor infrastructure leave Malaysians with few affordable commuting options. 

One more user criticised Anwar’s administration, claiming it is cutting corners “left, right and centre,” slowing business activity in Malaysia. He argued that after deep reductions, the government will present the narrative that the nation is on the right track, despite spending and productivity being weaker than before. 

Deputy Finance Minister Liew Chin Tong clarified that his remarks on petrol subsidies were taken out of context. He expressed regret for sparking what he called a “media circus,” acknowledging the sensitivity of the issue. Liew stressed that subsidy discussions must be handled carefully, as public sentiment remains tense amid fears of inflation and reduced allowances.

Despite this, concerns remain strong among Malaysians. Social media platforms continue to buzz daily with dissatisfaction over subsidy issues, reflecting widespread unease. Some users question why a senior official would make remarks that triggered such a storm, especially on a topic as sensitive as fuel subsidies. 

This article (Malaysians worry as BUDI95 petrol subsidy could reportedly drop to 150 litres) first appeared on The Independent Singapore News.