Mahathir Mohamad talks tariffs, conflict prevention
Former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad gives NHK World's Kitai Genki his take on US tariffs, conflict prevention, the United Nations, and more.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Japan Times
9 hours ago
- Japan Times
On the Trump campaign trail, Elon Musk juggled drugs and family drama
As Elon Musk became one of Donald Trump's closest allies last year, leading raucous rallies and donating about $275 million to help him win the U.S. presidency, he was also using drugs far more intensely than previously known, according to people familiar with his activities. Musk's drug consumption went well beyond occasional use. He told people he was taking so much ketamine, a powerful anesthetic, that it was affecting his bladder, a known effect of chronic use. He took ecstasy and psychedelic mushrooms. And he traveled with a daily medication box that held about 20 pills, including ones with the markings of the stimulant Adderall, according to a photo of the box and people who have seen it. It is unclear whether Musk, 53, was taking drugs when he became a fixture at the White House this year and was handed the power to slash the federal bureaucracy. But he has exhibited erratic behavior, insulting Cabinet members, gesturing like a Nazi and garbling his answers in a staged interview. At the same time, Musk's family life has grown increasingly tumultuous as he has negotiated overlapping romantic relationships and private legal battles involving his growing brood of children, according to documents and interviews. On Wednesday evening, Musk announced that he was ending his stint with the government, after lamenting how much time he had spent on politics instead of his businesses. Musk and his lawyer did not respond to requests for comment this week about his drug use and personal life. He has previously said he was prescribed ketamine for depression, taking it about every two weeks. And he told his biographer, "I really don't like doing illegal drugs.' The White House declined to comment on Musk's drug use. At a news conference with Trump on Friday afternoon, Musk was asked about The New York Times' coverage. He questioned the newspaper's credibility and told the reporter to "move on.' As a large government contractor, Musk's aerospace firm, SpaceX, must maintain a drug-free workforce and administers random drug tests to its employees. But Musk has received advance warning of the tests, according to people close to the process. SpaceX did not respond to questions about those warnings. Musk, who joined the president's inner circle after making a vast fortune on cars, satellites and rocket ships, has long been known for grandiose statements and a mercurial personality. Supporters see him as an eccentric genius whose slash-and-burn management style is key to his success. But last year, as he jumped into the political arena, some people who knew him worried about his frequent drug use, mood swings and fixation on having more children. This account of his behavior is based on private messages obtained by The New York Times as well as interviews with more than a dozen people who have known or worked with him. This year, some of his longtime friends have renounced him, pointing to some of his public conduct. "Elon has pushed the boundaries of his bad behavior more and more,' said Philip Low, a neuroscientist and onetime friend of Musk's who criticized him for his Nazi-like gesture at a rally. And some women are challenging Musk for control of their children. One of his former partners, Claire Boucher, the musician known as Grimes, has been fighting with Musk over their 5-year-old son, known as X. Musk is extremely attached to the boy, taking him to the Oval Office and high-profile gatherings that are broadcast around the world. Boucher has privately complained that the appearances violate a custody settlement in which she and Musk agreed to try to keep their children out of the public eye, according to people familiar with her concerns and the provision, which has not been previously reported. She has told people that she worries about the boy's safety, and that frequent travel and sleep deprivation are harming his health. Another mother, the right-leaning writer Ashley St. Clair, revealed in February that she had a secret relationship with Musk and had given birth to his 14th known child. Musk offered her a large settlement to keep his paternity concealed, but she refused. He sought a gag order in New York to force St. Clair to stop speaking publicly, she said in an interview. A ketamine habit Musk has described some of his mental health issues in interviews and on social media, saying in one post that he has felt "great highs, terrible lows and unrelenting stress.' He has denounced traditional therapy and antidepressants. He plays video games for hours on end. He struggles with binge eating, according to people familiar with his habits, and takes weight-loss medication. And he posts day and night on his social media platform, X. Musk has a history of recreational drug use, The Wall Street Journal reported last year. Some board members at Tesla, his electric vehicle company, have worried about his use of drugs, including Ambien, a sleep medication. U.S. President Donald Trump and Elon Musk during a news briefing at the White House on Feb. 11. | Eric Lee / The New York Times In an interview in March 2024, journalist Don Lemon pressed him on his drug use. Musk said he took only "a small amount' of ketamine, about once every two weeks, as a prescribed treatment for negative moods. "If you've used too much ketamine, you can't really get work done, and I have a lot of work,' he said. He had actually developed a far more serious habit, The New York Times found. Musk had been using ketamine often, sometimes daily, and mixing it with other drugs, according to people familiar with his consumption. The line between medical use and recreation was blurry, troubling some people close to him. He also took ecstasy and psychedelic mushrooms at private gatherings across the United States and in at least one other country, according to those who attended the events. The Food and Drug Administration has formally approved the use of ketamine only as an anesthetic in medical procedures. Doctors with a special license may prescribe it for psychiatric disorders like depression. But the agency has warned about its risks, which came into sharp relief after the death of actor Matthew Perry. The drug has psychedelic properties and can cause dissociation from reality. Chronic use can lead to addiction and problems with bladder pain and control. By the spring of last year, Musk was ramping up criticism of President Joe Biden, particularly his policies on illegal immigration and diversity initiatives. Musk was also facing federal investigations into his businesses. Regulators were looking into crashes of Tesla's self-driving cars and allegations of racism at its factories, among other complaints. "There are at least half a dozen initiatives of significance to take me down,' he wrote in a text message to someone close to him last May. "The Biden administration views me as the #2 threat after Trump.' "I can't be president, but I can help Trump defeat Biden and I will,' he added. He publicly endorsed Trump in July. Around that time, Musk told people that his ketamine use was causing bladder issues, according to people familiar with the conversations. On Oct. 5, he appeared with Trump at a rally for the first time, bouncing up and down around the candidate. That evening, Musk shared his excitement with a person close to him. "I'm feeling more optimistic after tonight,' he wrote in a text message. "Tomorrow we unleash the anomaly in the matrix.' "This is not something on the chessboard, so they will be quite surprised,' Musk added about an hour later. "'Lasers' from space.' After Trump won, Musk rented a cottage at Mar-a-Lago, the president-elect's Florida resort, to assist with the transition. Musk attended personnel meetings and sat in on phone calls with foreign leaders. And he crafted plans to overhaul the federal government under the new Department of Government Efficiency. Family secrets Musk has also been juggling the messy consequences of his efforts to produce more babies. By 2022, Musk, who has married and divorced three times, had fathered six children in his first marriage (including one who died in infancy), as well as two with Boucher. She told people she believed they were in a monogamous relationship and building a family together. But while a surrogate was pregnant with their third child, Boucher was furious to discover that Musk had recently fathered twins with Shivon Zilis, an executive at his brain implant company, Neuralink, according to people familiar with the situation. Musk was by then sounding an alarm that the world's declining birth rates would lead to the end of civilization, publicly encouraging people to have children and donating $10 million to a research initiative on population growth. Privately, he was spending time with Simone and Malcolm Collins, prominent figures in the emerging pronatalist movement, and urging his wealthy friends to have as many children as possible. He believed the world needed more intelligent people, according to people aware of the conversations. Collins declined to comment on his relationship with Musk, but said, "Elon is one of the people taking this cause seriously.' Even as Musk fathered more children, he favored his son X. By the fall of 2022, during a period when he and Boucher were broken up, he began traveling with the boy for days at a time, often without providing advance notice, according to people familiar with his actions. Boucher reconciled with Musk, only to get another unpleasant surprise. In August 2023, she learned that Zilis was expecting a third child with Musk via surrogacy and was pregnant with their fourth. Boucher and Musk began a contentious custody battle, during which Musk kept X for months. They eventually signed the joint custody agreement that specified keeping their children out of the spotlight. By mid-2023, unknown to either Boucher or Zilis, Musk had started a romantic relationship with St. Clair, the writer, who lives in New York City. St. Clair said in an interview that at first, Musk told her he wasn't dating anyone else. But when she was about six months pregnant, he acknowledged that he was romantically involved with Zilis, who went on to become a more visible fixture in Musk's life. St. Clair said that Musk told her he had fathered children around the world, including one with a Japanese pop star. He said he would be willing to give his sperm to anyone who wanted to have a child. "He made it seem like it was just his altruism and he generally believed these people should just have children,' St. Clair said. St. Clair said that when she was in a delivery room giving birth in September, Musk told her over disappearing Signal messages that he wanted to keep his paternity and their relationship quiet. Elon Musk jumps in the air during a rally for Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Oct. 5 last year. | Doug Mills / The New York Times On election night, St. Clair and Musk both went to Mar-a-Lago to celebrate Trump's victory. But she had to pretend that she hardly knew him, she said. He offered her $15 million and $100,000 a month until their son turned 21, in exchange for her silence, according to documents reviewed by the Times and first reported by the Journal. But she did not want her son's paternity to be hidden. After she went public in February, ahead of a tabloid story, she sued Musk to acknowledge paternity and, later, to get emergency child support. Musk sought a gag order, claiming that any publicity involving the child, or comments by St. Clair on her experience, would be a security risk for the boy. 'No sympathy for this behavior' Some of Musk's onetime friends have aired concerns about what they considered toxic public behavior. In a January newsletter explaining why their friendship had ended, Sam Harris, a public intellectual, wrote that Musk had used his social media platform to defame people and promote lies. "There is something seriously wrong with his moral compass, if not his perception of reality,' Harris wrote. Later that month, at a Trump inauguration event, Musk thumped his chest and thrust his hand diagonally upward, resembling a fascist salute. "My heart goes out to you,' he told the crowd. "It is thanks to you that the future of civilization is assured.' Musk dismissed the resulting public outcry, saying he had made a "positive gesture.' Low, who is chief executive of NeuroVigil, a neurotechnology company, was outraged by the performance. He wrote Musk a sharp email, shared with the Times, cursing him "for giving the Nazi salute.' When Musk didn't respond to the message, Low posted his concerns on social media. "I have no sympathy for this behavior,' he wrote on Facebook, referring to the gesture as well as other behaviors. "At some point, after having repeatedly confronted it in private, I believe the ethical thing to do is to speak out, forcefully and unapologetically.' The next month, Musk once again found himself under scrutiny, this time for an appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference outside Washington. As he walked onto the stage, he was handed a chain saw from one of his political allies, Javier Milei, the president of Argentina. "This is the chain saw for bureaucracy!' Musk shouted to the cheering crowd. Some conference organizers told the Times that they did not notice anything out of the ordinary about his behavior behind the scenes. But during an onstage interview, he spoke in disjointed bouts of stuttering and laughing, with sunglasses on. Clips of it went viral as many viewers speculated about possible drug use. This article originally appeared in The New York Times © 2025 The New York Times Company
Yomiuri Shimbun
14 hours ago
- Yomiuri Shimbun
US Proposes 60-Day Ceasefire for Gaza; Hostage-Prisoner Swap, Plan Shows
Reuters A Palestinian woman reacts in the aftermath of an Israeli strike on a house, in Gaza City, May 30, 2025. May 30 (Reuters) – The U.S. plan for Gaza, seen by Reuters on Friday, proposes a 60-day ceasefire and the release of 28 Israeli hostages – alive and dead – in the first week, in exchange for the release of 1,236 Palestinian prisoners and the remains of 180 dead Palestinians. The document, which says the plan is guaranteed by U.S. President Donald Trump and mediators Egypt and Qatar, includes sending humanitarian aid to Gaza as soon as Hamas signs off on the ceasefire agreement. The aid will be delivered by the United Nations, the Red Crescent and other agreed channels. The White House said on Thursday that Israel had agreed to the U.S. ceasefire proposal. Israeli media said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the families of hostages held in Gaza that Israel had accepted the deal presented by Trump's Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff. The prime minister's office declined to comment. The Palestinian militant group Hamas said it had received the Israeli response to the proposal, which it said 'fails to meet any of the just and legitimate demands of our people' including an immediate cessation of hostilities and an end to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Hamas official Basem Naim said the Israeli response 'fundamentally seeks to entrench the occupation and perpetuate policies of killing and starvation, even during what is supposed to be a period of temporary de-escalation'. However, he said Hamas' leadership was carrying out a 'thorough and responsible review of the new proposal'. The U.S. plan provides for Hamas to release the last 30 of the 58 remaining Israeli hostages once a permanent ceasefire is in place. Israel will also cease all military operations in Gaza as soon as the truce takes effect, it shows. The Israeli army will also redeploy its troops in stages. Deep differences between Hamas and Israel have stymied previous attempts to restore a ceasefire that broke down in March. Israel has insisted that Hamas disarm completely, be dismantled as a military and governing force and return all 58 hostages still held in Gaza before it will agree to end the war. Hamas has rejected the demand to give up its weapons and says Israel must pull its troops out of Gaza and commit to ending the war. Israel launched its campaign in Gaza in response to the Hamas attack in its south on October 7, 2023, that killed some 1,200 people and saw 251 Israelis taken hostage into Gaza, according to Israeli tallies. The subsequent Israeli military campaign has killed more than 54,000 Palestinians, Gaza health officials say, and has left the enclave in ruins. MOUNTING PRESSURE Israel has come under increasing international pressure, with many European countries that are usually reluctant to criticise it openly demanding an end to the war and a major relief effort. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said on Friday that Israel is blocking all but a trickle of humanitarian aid from entering Gaza, with almost no ready-to-eat food entering what its spokesperson described as 'the hungriest place on earth'. Witkoff told reporters on Wednesday that Washington was close to 'sending out a new term sheet' about a ceasefire by the two sides in the conflict. 'I have some very good feelings about getting to a long-term resolution, temporary ceasefire and a long-term resolution, a peaceful resolution, of that conflict,' Witkoff said then. The 60-day ceasefire, according to the plan, may be extended if negotiations for a permanent ceasefire are not concluded within the set period. Senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri said on Thursday the terms of the proposal echoed Israel's position and did not contain commitments to end the war, withdraw Israeli troops or admit aid as Hamas has demanded. AID DISTRIBUTION The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a private group backed by the United States and endorsed by Israel, said it had distributed a total of more than 1.8 million meals this week and it expanded its aid distribution to a third site in Gaza on Thursday. GHF plans to open more sites in coming weeks. The group, heavily criticised by the United Nations and other aid groups as inadequate and flawed, began its operation this week in Gaza, where the U.N. has said 2 million people are at risk of famine after an 11-week blockade by Israel on aid entering the enclave. There were tumultuous scenes on Tuesday as thousands of Palestinians rushed to distribution points and forced private security contractors to retreat. The chaotic start to the operation has raised international pressure on Israel to get more food in and halt the fighting in Gaza. French President Emmanuel Macron said on Friday that his country could harden its position if Israel continues to block humanitarian aid to Gaza.
Yomiuri Shimbun
15 hours ago
- Yomiuri Shimbun
UN Seeks 20% Cut in Staff to Help Deal with a Funding Shortfall
Reuters U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres attends a press conference with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz (not pictured), in Berlin, Germany, May 14, 2025. UNITED NATIONS (AP) — More than 60 United Nations offices, agencies and operations have been ordered to submit proposals by mid-June to cut 20% of their staff, as part of a major reform effort to consolidate operations in the face of a critical funding crunch. The cuts affect about 14,000 posts covered by the regular budget, or about 2,800 posts, U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters Friday. These include staff in the U.N.'s political and humanitarian offices, and its agencies helping refugees, promoting gender equality and dealing with international trade, the environment and cities. The U.N. agency supporting Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, is also on the list. U.N. Controller Chandramouli Ramanathan said in a memo to the affected agencies that the staff cuts are part of Secretary-General Antonio Guterres' goal of achieving a reduction of between 15% and 20% in the U.N.'s current budget of $3.72 billion. The cuts are part of the UN80 reform initiative launched by Guterres in March as the world body approaches its 80th anniversary later this year. The U.N. chief has dismissed any relationship with the cuts to foreign aid and other programs by U.S. President Donald Trump. Instead, he has pointed to shrinking U.N. resources over at least the past seven years as not all member states pay their yearly dues and many don't pay on time. The U.S., with the world's biggest economy, is expected to pay 22% of the regular budget, while China, with the second-largest economy, recently had its share raised to 20%. Last year, 152 of the U.N.'s 193 member nations paid their dues in full, including China, but 41 countries did not, including the United States. In an executive order dated Feb. 4, Trump ordered a review within 180 days of U.S. participation in and funding for all international organizations, including the United Nations. The controller's memo, obtained Thursday night by The Associated Press, gives advice to the heads of agencies on which posts to cut: 'Assess functions based on efficiency; Prioritize based on impact; Target redundant, overlapping or non-critical functions or roles for consolidation or abolition.' Guterres and his predecessors in past decades have struggled to reform the United Nations, which was established following World War II, and bring it into a modern era with different powers, new technology and greater global divisions. One key problem is that while the secretary-general is the U.N.'s chief executive, power rests with the 193 member nations, which have very different ideas about the U.N. and the world. The proposed cuts must be submitted to the controller by June 13. Dujarric said they will be incorporated into Guterres' proposed 2026 budget, to be adopted by the General Assembly in December. The U.N.'s 11 peacekeeping missions are financed by a separate budget, and many of its far-flung agencies and operations are funded entirely by voluntary contributions, including the Rome-based World Food Program, known as WFP. Several U.N. agencies were already planning to slash jobs or cut costs in other ways, with officials pointing to funding reductions mainly from the United States and warning that vital relief programs will be severely affected as a result. WFP is expected to cut up to 30% of its staff, and the head of the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR said it would downsize its headquarters and regional offices to reduce costs by 30% and cut senior-level positions by 50%, according to internal memos obtained by the AP. Other agencies, including UNICEF, the U.N. children's agency, and OCHA, the U.N. humanitarian agency, have also announced or plan to make cuts.
