Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim was appointed prime minister on Thursday, the sultan’s palace said, and will be sworn in at 5 p.m. (0900 GMT).

A general election on Saturday ended in an unprecedented hung parliament with neither of two main alliances, one led by Anwar and the other ex-premier Muhyiddin Yassin, immediately able to secure enough seats in parliament to form a government.

Anwar’s appointment caps a three-decade long journey from heir apparent to a prisoner convicted of sodomy, to longtime opposition leader.

The 75-year-old has time and again been denied the premiership despite getting within striking distance over the years: he was deputy prime minister in the 1990s and the official prime minister-in-waiting in 2018.

In between, he spent nearly a decade in jail for sodomy and corruption in what he says were politically motivated charges aimed at ending his career.

Ukraine’s government appealed to people to conserve energy amid relentless Russian strikes that have halved the country’s power capacity, as the United Nations health body warned of a humanitarian disaster in Ukraine this winter.

* Ukraine’s national power grid operator said the damage dealt to Ukrainian power-generating facilities by Russian missile attacks was “colossal” but he dismissed the need to evacuate civilians.

* The Kremlin said no substantive progress had been made towards creating a security zone around Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine, once again accusing Kyiv of shelling at the plant and risking a nuclear incident.

* There are no immediate nuclear safety or security concerns at the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia reactor complex despite shelling at the weekend that caused widespread damage, the U.N. atomic watchdog said after its experts toured the site.

* Moscow and Kyiv blame each other for repeated shelling in the immediate area of the facility.
CONFLICT

* Battles continued to rage in the east, where Russia has sent some of the forces it moved following its withdrawal from around the city of Kherson in the south. Moscow is pressing an offensive of its own along a stretch of frontline west of the city of Donetsk, held by its proxies since 2014.

* “The enemy does not stop shelling the positions of our troops and settlements near the contact line (in the Donetsk region),” the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces said.

* Russian air defences repelled two drone attacks in Crimea, annexed from Ukraine in 2014, including one targeting a thermal power station near Sevastopol, the home port of Russia’s Black Sea fleet, the regional governor said.

* Russian shelling hit a humanitarian aid distribution centre in the town of Orihiv in southeastern Ukraine, killing a volunteer and wounding two women, the regional governor said.

* Reuters could not independently verify the battlefield accounts.

* Ukraine’s SBU security service and police raided a 1,000-year-old Orthodox Christian monastery in Kyiv as part of operations to counter suspected “subversive activities by Russian special services”, the SBU said.

* Russia’s Orthodox Church condemned the raid as an “act of intimidation”.

* Russian President Vladimir Putin will in the coming days meet the mothers of reservists called up to fight in Ukraine, the Kremlin said.

* Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Germany must be ready for the situation in Ukraine to escalate but that his recent trip to China was worth it alone for spelling out the two countries’ joint stance against using nuclear weapons.

* Disbursement of $4.5 billion in U.S. economic aid for Ukraine will begin in the coming weeks, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said.

“Stock up on warm clothes, blankets, think about options that will help you wait a long outage. It’s better to do it now than to be miserable.” –Sergey Kovalenko, the head of YASNO, which provides energy for Kyiv.

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Indonesian authorities struggled on Thursday to get aid to thousands of evacuees displaced by a deadly earthquake in western Java, as rain-triggered landslides and difficult mountainous terrain hampered the efforts of rescue teams.

Monday’s 5.6-magnitude earthquake in the town of Cianjur, about 75 km (50 miles) south of the capital Jakarta, killed at least 271 people with 40 missing, and left many sheltering in tents with scant medical and aid supplies.

Survivors included a woman who gave birth at a makeshift medical centre in a tent.

“The conditions are steep,” President Joko Widodo said of the rugged terrain as he visited Cianjur. “It’s still raining and there are still aftershocks. The ground is shaky, so caution is needed.”

Evacuation remains a priority, he said, adding that he wants to make sure distribution goes well. He visited emergency tents, handing out food to children.

Suharyanto, the disaster mitigation agency chief, said many have not received aid and officials have gathered nearly 200 volunteers to help distribute water, instant food, tents and diapers.

With dozens missing, rescuers used earth diggers and other heavy machinery to clear mud and debris in search of victims. Some areas that have been cut off by landslides could only be reached by helicopter, disaster officials have said.

Search efforts focussed on Cijedil village, where about 30 people were thought to be buried under a landslide, Joshua Banjarnahor of the national search and rescue agency, told reporters.

Rain-soaked slopes and potential landslides were delaying rescue efforts, the search and rescue agency said on Wednesday, adding the likelihood of finding survivors was getting slimmer.

Indonesia is one of the world’s most earthquake-prone nations, regularly recording strong earthquakes offshore where fault lines run.

Monday’s quake was particularly deadly because it struck a densely populated area at a depth of just 10 km (6 miles). Poor construction standards also caused buildings to collapse, leading to many deaths, officials said.

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