PERTH: Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida warned Saturday that Russia using nuclear weapons would be seen as an “act of hostility against humanity,” describing President Vladimir Putin’s saber rattling as “deeply disturbing.” “Russia’s act of threatening the use of nuclear weapons is a serious threat to the peace and security of the international community and absolutely unacceptable,” said Kishida, who leads the only country ever hit with a nuclear bomb. In May next year, Kishida is expected to host leaders from the G7 countries in Hiroshima, where a US nuclear bomb was dropped on August 6, 1945, resulting in the deaths of 140,000 people. The Japanese city of Nagasaki was hit three days later. Speaking in Australia, Kishida said the 77-year period of no nuclear weapons use “must not be ended.” “If nuclear weapons were ever used, that would be an act of hostility against humanity... the international community will never allow such an act,” he said. Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February, President Putin has made several thinly veiled threats about his willingness to deploy tactical nuclear weapons.

ROME: Giorgia Meloni, whose political party has neo-fascist roots, was sworn in on Saturday as Italy’s first far-right premier. Meloni, 45, took the oath of office before the Italian president at the presidential palace, becoming also the first woman to be the nation’s premier. Her Brothers of Italy party was the top vote-getter in last month’s national election. Meloni announced her Cabinet on Friday evening. Her coalition allies include the right-wing League of Matteo Salvini and the conservative Forza Italia party headed by former Premier Silvio Berlusconi.

KABUL: Taliban security forces killed six Daesh members in an overnight operation in the Afghan capital, Kabul, a spokesman for the ruling group’s administration said on Saturday. Daesh members killed in the raid on their hideout were involved in two major attacks in recent weeks, one on a city mosque and the other on a tutoring institute in which dozens of female students were killed, said the spokesman, Qari Yusuf Ahmadi. “They were the attackers of the Wazir Akbar Khan mosque and also ... of Kaaj Institute,” said Ahmadi, who said one Taliban security force member was killed in the operation. No group claimed responsibility for either attack. The blast at the female section of the Kaaj Institute education center on Sept. 30 killed 53 people, most of them girls and young women. On Sept. 23, at least seven people were killed and more than 40 wounded in blast near a mosque in Wazir Akbar Khan, a heavily fortified neighborhood once home to a “Green Zone” of embassies and foreign force bases. Since the Taliban took over in 2021, they say they have focused on securing the country after decades of war. However, a series of blasts have rocked the capital and other urban areas in recent months and the United Nations has said security is deteriorating. The Afghan affiliate of Daesh, known as Daesh Khorasan, after an old name of the region, are enemies of the Taliban. Fighters loyal to Daesh first appeared in eastern Afghanistan in 2014, and later made inroads in other areas.

BEIJING: China’s five-yearly Communist Party Congress wrapped up on Saturday with President Xi Jinping set to emerge from the event as leader for an unprecedented third term.

Xi delivered a speech starting about midday (0400 GMT) in one of the final events of the week-long gathering at Beijing’s Great Hall of the People.

“Dare to struggle, dare to win, bury your heads and work hard. Be determined to keep forging ahead,” he told the party faithful.

His speech ended a week of largely rubber-stamp meetings among 2,300 party delegates, who were selected by the party to approve a reshuffle of its leadership.

However in an unexpected move at such a heavily choreographed event, former leader Hu Jintao was led out of the closing ceremony. No official explanation was given.

The new Central Committee of around 200 senior Party officials was elected shortly after 11 am Saturday, state media agency Xinhua reported, without disclosing a full list of members.

Delegates also voted to endorse Xi’s “work report” delivered at the Congress’s opening last Sunday and rubber-stamped a resolution on the Party’s constitution.

Xi is now widely expected to be unveiled as general secretary on Sunday, shortly after the first meeting of the new Central Committee.

This will allow Xi to sail through to a third term as China’s president, due to be announced during the government’s annual legislative sessions in March.

Xi previously abolished the presidential two-term limit in 2018, paving the way for him to rule indefinitely.

The weekend will also see the new Central Committee approve a reshuffled 25-member Politburo, as well as a Politburo Standing Committee — China’s apex of power — of around seven people, which analysts expect to be stacked with Xi allies.

At Sunday’s Congress opening ceremony, Xi delivered a 105-minute speech lauding the party’s achievements and glossing over domestic problems such as the stalling economy and the damage wrought by his harsh zero-Covid policy.

Heavy on ideological rhetoric and light on policy, a defiant Xi also urged Communist Party members to steel themselves against numerous challenges including a hardening geopolitical climate.

“We must... be ready to withstand high winds, choppy waters and even dangerous storms,” he said.

“Confronted with drastic changes in the international landscape, especially external attempts to blackmail, contain, (and) blockade... China, we have put our national interests first.”

Security was also a main focus of the speech, in which Xi lauded Hong Kong’s transition from “chaos to governance” and vowed to “never commit to abandoning the use of force” to seize the self-ruled island of Taiwan.

The Congress was set to further cement Xi’s position as China’s most powerful leader since Mao Zedong, with analysts predicting he was virtually certain to be reappointed for a third term in power.

Xi’s work report “is a carefully scripted drama through which the power of the Party, its leader, and its ideas are meant to be elevated and amplified,” wrote David Bandurski, editor of the University of Hong Kong’s China Media Project.

But some key questions remain unresolved, including whether Xi, 69, will appoint a potential successor to the Politburo Standing Committee and whether a pithier form of his signature political philosophy will be enshrined in the charter of the 96-million-strong party.

The latter would make Xi Jinping Thought “the latest, 21st-century rendition of Marxism (and) the state ideology of China,” said Steve Tsang, director of the SOAS China Institute at the University of London.

“Xi’s power will be akin to that of the dictator of China, and there will be next to no scope for anyone to advise him to attempt course correction,” Tsang said.

“This will increase the risk of policy mistakes being made, as everything will depend on Xi getting it right.”

FORT WORTH, Texas: A federal judge ruled Friday that relatives of people killed in the crashes of two Boeing 737 Max planes are crime victims under federal law and should have been told about private negotiations over a settlement that spared Boeing from criminal prosecution.

In December, some crash victims’ relatives said the Justice Department violated their legal rights when it struck a January 2021 deferred prosecution agreement with the planemaker over two crashes that killed 346 people.

Boeing, which misled safety regulators who approved the Max, agreed to pay $2.5 billion including a $243.6 million fine. The Justice Department agreed not to prosecute the company for conspiracy to defraud the government.

The Justice Department, in explaining why it didn’t tell families about the negotiations, argued that the relatives are not crime victims.

The deal capped a 21-month investigation into the design and development of the 737 MAX following the deadly crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia in 2018 and 2019.

346 - The total number of people who perished in two 737 Max crashes, including 189 in Indonesia in October 2018 and 157 in Ethiopia five months later

$20 billion - The amount the crashes have cost Boeing in compensation, production costs, and fines, and which led to a 20-month grounding for the best-selling plane

After the families filed the legal challenge saying their rights were violated under the Crime Victims’ Rights Act, Attorney General Merrick Garland met with some of them but stood by the plea deal, which included a $244 million fine, $1.77 billion compensation to airlines and a $500 million crash-victim fund.

In seeking court relief, the families argued the government “lied and violated their rights through a secret process” and asked US District Judge Reed O’Connor to rescind Boeing’s immunity from criminal prosecution and order the planemaker publicly arraigned on felony charges.

Boeing Co., which is based in Arlington, Virginia, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

O’Connor, in Fort Worth, Texas, said the crashes were a foreseeable consequence of Boeing’s conspiracy, making the relatives representatives of crime victims.

“In sum, but for Boeing’s criminal conspiracy to defraud the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration), 346 people would not have lost their lives in the crashes,” he wrote.

Boeing did not disclose key details to the FAA of a safety system called MCAS, which was linked to both fatal crashes and designed to help counter a tendency of the MAX to pitch up. “Had Boeing not committed its crime” pilots in Ethiopia and

Indonesia would have “received training adequate to respond to the MCAS activation that occurred on both aircrafts,” O’Connor ruled.

The crashes, which have cost Boeing more than $20 billion in compensation, production costs, and fines, and led to a 20-month grounding for the best-selling plane, prompted Congress to pass legislation reforming FAA airplane certification.

Boeing wants Congress to waive a December deadline imposed by the legislation for the FAA to certify the MAX 7 and MAX 10. After that date, all planes must have modern cockpit alerting systems, which the 737 planes do not have.

Last month, Boeing paid $200 million to settle Securities and Exchange Commission charges it misled investors about the MAX.

Paul Cassell, a lawyer for the families, said the ruling “is a tremendous victory” and “sets the stage for a pivotal hearing, where we will present proposed remedies that will allow criminal prosecution to hold Boeing fully accountable.”

Naoise Connolly Ryan, whose husband died in the second Max crash, in Ethiopia, said Boeing is responsible for his death.

“Families like mine are the true victims of Boeing’s criminal misconduct, and our views should have been considered before the government gave them a sweetheart deal,” she said in a statement issued by a lawyer for the families.

ABUJA, Nigeria: At least 36 bodies have been recovered after gunmen attacked a village in northcentral Nigeria, officials said Friday, prompting calls for the nation’s government to license sophisticated guns for local guards. The gunmen reportedly arrived in a large group in the remote Gbeji community of Benue state Wednesday and opened fire on villagers in the latest deadly violence in the West African nation’s troubled northern region. Two police officers were among those killed in the attack that left many injured, said Terver Akase, a spokesman for the Benue state government. Details of the incident remained sketchy Friday. Akase blamed the assault on herdsmen, while local media said it was a reprisal for herders in the community being targeted by an earlier attack. Benue officials visited Gbeji on Friday and met with families of the victims, urging the national government to license sophisticated guns for the state’s local security force to defend residents. “The security agencies have been overstretched. That being the case, our people have to defend themselves,” a government statement quoted Gov. Ortom’s representative as saying. Gabriel Suswam, who represents the affected area in Nigeria’s Senate, said the Nigerian government “has failed woefully in the protection of lives and property.” Such attacks are frequent in Nigeria’s middle belt and central regions where deadly clashes between local communities and herdsmen have continued for many years, defying government and security measures. At least 14 people were killed in a similar incident in another part of Benue a month ago. The herdsmen are mostly young pastoralists from Nigeria’s Fulani tribe caught up in a decades-long conflict between host communities and herdsmen over limited access to water and land. Attacks sometimes take a religious turn between Muslim and Christian communities amid Nigeria’s deep religious divide and it is common for authorities to not announce any arrests in many cases.