By Rozanna Latiff and Ebrahim Harris

MERSING, Malaysia -A Dutch teenager who disappeared after going diving off the coast of Malaysia is dead, according to his father who was found drifting at sea on Saturday, officials said.

Fourteen-year-old Nathan Renze Chesters and his British father Adrian Peter Chesters, 46, were in a group of four who went missing on Wednesday afternoon on a training dive near Tokong Sanggol, a small island off the southeastern town of Mersing.

The elder Chesters and Alexia Alexandra Molina, 18, from France were rescued by fishermen at around 1 a.m. (1700 GMT on Friday) off Indonesia’s Bintan island, southeast of Singapore, and some 100 km (60 miles) south of where they went missing, officials said.

The group’s instructor, Kristine Grodem, 35, from Norway, was rescued on Thursday.

Nathan, whose body has not been recovered, was confirmed to have died by his father, “as he was too weak and could not survive,” the Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency said in a statement.

Police had said Indonesian authorities would take over the search for the teenager as he had likely drifted into their waters.

“We believe there is a high likelihood that he is no longer in Malaysian waters based on the movement of sea currents, as well as the time and location where the other victims were found,” Mersing district police chief Cyril Edward Nuing told reporters.

Malaysian assets would be on standby to help, he said.

Grodem earlier told officials the group surfaced about an hour into their dive on Wednesday but could not find their boat.

She was later separated from the others after being caught in strong currents.

The boat operator who took them to the dive site was detained after testing positive for drugs, police said.

(Reporting by Rozanna Latiff and Ebrahim Harris; Editing by Robert Birsel and William Mallard)

By Uditha Jayasinghe and Devjyot Ghoshal

COLOMBO -Sri Lanka’s central bank doubled its key interest rates on Friday, raising each by an unprecedented 700 basis points to tame inflation that has soared due to crippling shortages of basic goods driven by a devastating economic crisis.

The heavily indebted country has little money left to pay for imports, meaning fuel, power, food and, increasingly, medicines are in short supply.

Street protests have been held nearly non-stop for more than a month, despite a five-day state of emergency and a two-day curfew.

The Central Bank of Sri Lanka’s (CBSL) monetary board raised its standing lending facility to 14.50% and its standing deposit facility to 13.50%.

The build-up of aggregate demand, domestic supply disruptions, the plunge of the local currency and high prices of commodities globally could keep up the pressure on inflation, CBSL said in its monetary policy decision statement.

“The rate hike will give a strong signal to investors and markets that we are coming out of this as soon as possible,” governor P. Nandalal Weerasinghe said at a post-policy decision briefing.

INDEPENDENT CENTRAL BANK

Weerasinghe said that he wanted to run the central bank independently without any external influence and that he had been given the authority to do so by the president and has been asked to expedite measures to get the country out of the current crisis.

“I want to be very clear that my message is not one of blind positivity. Things are challenging and we need to take decisive action. Things will get worse before they get better, but we need to apply the breaks to this vehicle before it crashes,” he added.

Inflation hit 18.7% in March.

An analyst had expected hikes of up to 400 basis points.

“With the monetary policy tightening now finally clear, the stage is set to take the next vital steps with regards to IMF and debt restructuring and clearly communicate this to the international stage,” said Thilina Panduwawala, head of economic research at Frontier Research.

Finance Minister Ali Sabry said earlier that the country must urgently restructure its debt and seek external financial help, while the main opposition threatened a no-confidence motion in the government and business leaders warned exports could plummet.

“We cannot step away from repaying debt because the consequences are terrifying. There is no alternative, we must restructure our debt,” Sabry told parliament.

J.P. Morgan analysts estimate that Sri Lanka’s gross debt servicing costs will amount to $7 billion this year, with a $1 billion repayment due in July.

“We have to go for a debt moratorium,” said Sabry, who offered to quit a day after he was appointed on Monday but later confirmed that he was still finance minister.

“We have to suspend debt repayment for some time and get bilateral and multilateral support to manage our balance of payments.”

NO-CONFIDENCE MOTION?

President Gotabaya Rajapaksa is running his administration with only a handful of ministers after his entire cabinet resigned this week, while the opposition and some coalition partners rejected calls for a unity government to deal with the country’s worst crisis in decades.

At least 41 lawmakers have quit the ruling coalition to become independents, though the government says it still has a majority in parliament.

“The government needs to address the financial crisis and work to improve governance, or we will move a no-confidence motion,” Sajith Premadasa, leader of the Samagi Jana Balawegaya opposition group, said in parliament.

Sabry, a former justice minister, said political stability was necessary as the country prepared to start talks with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) this month. Weerasinghe said he will be holding a virtual meeting with the IMF on April 11.

Earlier on Friday, nearly two dozen associations, representing industries that collectively employ a fifth of the country’s 22 million people, together urged the government to quickly seek financial help from the IMF, the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank (ADB).

Masakorala said that both merchandise and service exports could drop 20%-30% this year due to a dollar shortage, higher freight costs and power cuts.

Sri Lanka’s foreign exchange reserves have plunged some 70% in the past two years, hitting $1.93 billion at the end of March.

(Writing by Krishna N. Das; Additional reporting by Swati Bhat; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman, Raju Gopalakrishnan, Hugh Lawson and John Stonestreet)

By Karen Freifeld and Luc Cohen

NEW YORK -New York state’s attorney general is seeking to compel real estate company Cushman & Wakefield to comply with subpoenas in connection with its civil probe into the Trump Organization, according to court filings on Friday.

Attorney General Letitia James has been investigating former U.S. President Donald Trump’s business practices for three-and-a-half years, with a focus on whether his company misstated the values of its real estate properties to obtain favorable loans and tax deductions.

James said on Friday that Cushman had conducted appraisals for several Trump Organization properties, including the Seven Springs estate in New York’s Westchester County, the Trump National Golf Course in Los Angeles, and 40 Wall Street in downtown Manhattan.

James’ office is seeking to determine whether the appraisals prepared by Cushman were fraudulent or misleading, but Cushman has refused to comply with a subpoena issued in February 2022 and has only partially complied with an earlier subpoena, according to a filing.

“While Cushman initially expressed its desire to comply with OAG’s subpoenas, the company nonetheless withheld hundreds of responsive documents and instructed four witnesses not to answer numerous questions based on meritless privilege assertions by the Trump Organization,” the filing from James’ office read.

A Cushman spokesperson said the filings did not accurately characterize the company’s responses.

“Any suggestion that Cushman & Wakefield has not responded in good faith to the Attorney General’s investigation is fundamentally untrue,” the spokesperson said in a statement. “We stand behind our appraisers and our work.”

Cushman said in January 2021 that it had cut ties with the Trump Organization.

Trump, a Republican who lost his bid for re-election in November 2020, denies wrongdoing and has dismissed James’ probe as a politically motivated witch hunt. James, a Democrat, is running for re-election for her post.

James’ pursuit of Cushman’s records comes after she asked a New York judge to hold Trump in contempt of court for not turning over documents she subpoenaed, and to fine him $10,000 for each day he does not comply.

On Friday, New York State Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron said he would hold a hearing on April 25 on whether Trump should be held in contempt.

(Reporting by Luc Cohen in New York; Editing by Leslie Adler and Richard Pullin)

By Deena Beasley

(Reuters) – Eisai Co Ltd and Eli Lilly and Co on Friday said they still plan to seek accelerated U.S. approval for experimental Alzheimer’s drugs even after the Medicare health plan decided to severely limit coverage of medicines approved in that manner.

On Thursday, after a months-long review and a pressure campaign from patient advocacy groups, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) said it would only pay for Biogen Inc’s Aduhelm, and other drugs that work in a similar fashion, for patients enrolled in valid clinical studies, unless the treatments demonstrate clear evidence of patient benefit.

Medicare covers nearly 64 million Americans age 65 and older, so the coverage decision could affect 85% of people who might otherwise use the medications for the age-related condition.

Eisai’s lecanemab and Lilly’s donanemab, like Aduhelm, are monoclonal antibodies designed to remove beta-amyloid, a type of protein fragment that accumulates in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients. The two drugmakers said they expect upcoming Phase III trial results to eventually validate earlier-stage data under review by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

A fourth plaque-targeting antibody, gantenerumab, is in late-stage development at Roche Holding AG, which is not seeking an accelerated FDA review.

The FDA in June authorized Biogen’s Aduhelm – the first drug in this class and first U.S. approved Alzheimer’s treatment in 20 years – under the agency’s accelerated pathway based on the drug’s plaque-clearing ability, rather than proof it slows cognitive decline in Alzheimer’s patients.

Medicare, however, has decided to allow standard reimbursement only for Alzheimer’s drugs approved under the traditional FDA process based on “a direct measure of clinical benefit.”

Eisai, which is partnered with Biogen, said it aims to complete a rolling FDA application for lecanemab, under the accelerated pathway, by mid-year. The Japanese drugmaker said it also expects results from its 1,800-patient, Phase III trial this fall.

If those results are positive, Eisai said it believes the large study could meet the “high level of evidence” criteria set by Medicare in its coverage decision.

The study is designed to show that lecanemab can slow by at least 25% the rate of cognitive and functional decline.

“It is a disease-modifying drug,” Ivan Cheung, Eisai’s U.S. chairman, said in a recent interview with Reuters. “You expect to see separation between the treated and untreated groups that improves over time.”

Roche also expects to report Phase III trial results for gantenerumab later this year.

Lilly, in a statement, said it intends to complete its current, rolling application for accelerated FDA approval of donanemab this year. It does not expect to have results from a Phase III trial of the drug until mid-2023.

The Indianapolis-based company said it believes Medicare coverage restrictions are “unnecessary, restrictive and inappropriate” for FDA-approved drugs.

The idea that removing amyloid plaques is reasonably likely to slow cognitive and functional decline in people living with early Alzheimer’s is known as the “amyloid hypothesis,” a theory that has led to long history of drugs that tried and failed to clear the plaques or help patients.

Greg Rippon, neuroscience and Alzheimer’s Disease medical lead at Roche’s Genentech unit, explained in a recent interview that the theory is supported by analysis of inherited forms of Alzheimer’s, which are all caused by mutations in amyloid processing.

He said more recent studies have shown that the build-up of amyloid is a precursor to other brain dysfunction that speeds neurodegeneration for patients with Alzheimer’s.

    “Obviously, it comes down to clinical data and demonstrating that clinical benefit and that’s where a lot of skepticism is centered,” Rippon said.

(This story refiles to correct spelling of ‘plaques’ in paragraph 15)

(Reporting By Deena Beasley; Editing by Bill Berkrot)

By Tyler Clifford

(Reuters) -A federal jury on Friday acquitted two men of conspiring to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer in 2020 and the judge overseeing the case declared a mistrial for two other men after jurors could not come to a verdict for them.

The men were charged in a plot prosecutors say had been inspired by their fierce opposition to pandemic-related restrictions that Whitmer’s office imposed, and faced charges including conspiracy to kidnap and use a weapon of mass destruction.

The prosecution, who said the men belonged to self-styled militia groups, accused them of planning to break into Whitmer’s vacation home, spirit her away and put her on “trial” for treason.

The kidnapping, the defendants had hoped, would force an end to Whitmer’s pandemic mandates, while pushing the country – highly polarized ahead of the 2020 elections – into a second American civil war, the prosecution said.

But the prosecution failed to convince jurors in the Grand Rapids, Michigan, federal courthouse. The 12-member panel found Brandon Caserta and Daniel Harris not guilty of any charges. The jury was not able to agree on a verdict for Adam Fox and Barry Croft Jr.

The jury’s decision was setback for federal prosecutors in one of the highest-profile cases in years involving domestic terrorism charges and militias.

“Obviously we’re disappointed with the outcome,” Andrew Birge, U.S. Attorney for the western district of Michigan, told reporters outside the courthouse.

Birge did not directly respond to questions on if he intended to retry Fox and Croft. But he hinted in a written statement that he would by saying: “Two defendants now await re-trial and, for that reason, we have no further statement at this time.”

Mike Hills, a defense attorney for Caserta, told Reuters in a phone call that the plot to kidnap the governor “was a fabrication of the FBI.”

“They (the FBI) created the appearance of a conspiracy that never existed,” Hills said.

He added that Caserta was dragged into the case “by the predatory conduct of the FBI” as they sought to give credibility to the case by ensnaring more people in it. The FBI did not respond an emailed request for comment. Defense attorneys for the other defendants did not return requests for comment.

At trial the defense argued that the government used FBI informants and undercover agents to encourage online discussions about the alleged plot, hoping to entrap the defendants in alleged crimes because of their political views, they said.

The case stands as one of the most high-profile prosecutions of alleged members of right-wing organizations that have sprung up in the years since former President Donald Trump’s election in 2016. It also highlights the extent to which the pandemic and government efforts to control it have become a wedge issue in U.S. politics.

The acquittals come despite key testimony from Ty Garbin and Kaleb Franks, two others who were charged in the alleged plot before striking plea deals with prosecutors. Garbin is currently serving a six-year sentence, while Franks is awaiting sentencing.

The four on trial are among 13 men who were arrested in October 2020 and charged with state or federal crimes in the alleged kidnapping conspiracy. Seven of them are facing charges in state court.

The FBI said it had begun tracking the group’s movements after seeing online discussions that included posts about the violent overthrow of some state governments.

(Additional reporting by Brad Brooks in Lubbock, Texas and Brendan O’Brien in Chicago; Editing by Mark Porter, Howard Goller and Aurora Ellis)