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COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — Six-times Sri Lanka’s prime minister, President Ranil Wickremesinghe had long aspired to the pinnacle of power, enduring setback after setback but always managing to recover from seemingly impossible defeats.

He has moved quickly to consolidate his position since lawmakers elected him this week to finish the term of his predecessor, ousted President Gotabaya Rajapaksa. In the wee hours Friday, army troops and police forcefully cleared the capital’s main protest site of demonstrators who had occupied it for months, angry over the country’s economic collapse.

On Friday, he appointed a classmate and ally of Rajapaksa, Dinesh Gunawardena, to be his prime minister and partner in rescuing the country from its predicament. The question is whether they can muster the political heft and public support to get the job done.

Even his critics respect Wickremesinghe for his perseverance.

“If you are broken down and think you can’t get what you want just look at a picture of Ranil Wickremesinghe,” said lawmaker Udaya Gammanpila, who supported Wickremesinghe’s main rival in the presidential vote.

Wickremesinghe is a divisive figure, unpopular among Sri Lankans fed up with shortages of food, fuel and medicine. Last week, protesters burned his private residence to the ground.

He’s as well qualified as anyone could be after nearly a half-century in politics, but it’s unclear that the wiles that kept him head of his party for most of that time will suffice to overcome a tide of public antagonism. Few view Wickremesinghe as a real change from the government that was toppled earlier this month when Rajapaksa fled the country as angry crowds stormed his office.

Born into a wealthy, politically active family whose fortune was made in timber and the media, Wickremesinghe trained as a lawyer and was elected to Parliament for the first time exactly 45 years before he took the oath of office Thursday.

In coming days, he is expected to make a major policy speech laying out plans for fixing Sri Lanka’s dire economic, humanitarian and political crisis.

Speaking just after he was pronounced the winner of Wednesday’s secret ballot in the parliament, Wickremesinghe urged fellow lawmakers to unite in saving the nation.

“People are not expecting the old politics from us, they expect us to work together,” he told Parliament.

Meanwhile, out on the streets, protesters were chanting, “Ranil, Go Home!”

Over the years, Wickremesinghe has moved in and out of the prime minister’s office as his United National Party gained and lost power. But he coveted the presidency, where the real power lies, running for office twice: in 1999 and 2005.

In 2020, Wickremesinghe’s party splintered and suffered a humiliating defeat in national elections. He became its sole representative in the parliament, appointed rather than elected to his seat based on the proportion of votes his party took in the vote. Detractors argued he lacks any mandate.

In May, Rajapaksa turned to Wickremesinghe to replace his brother Mahinda Rajapaksa as prime minister after Mahinda was forced to quit.

The hope was to restore Sri Lanka’s international credibility after it stopped making payments on its $51 billion in foreign debt when its foreign reserves dwindled perilously low, and Wickremesenghe has been leading negotiations with the International Monetary Fund on a bailout.

But critics accuse him of protecting members of the Rajapaksa family, who are widely blamed for leading the nation into ruin, from allegations of corruption and other wrongdoing.

Rajapaksa’s resignation led to Wickremesinghe becoming acting president, in addition to being prime minister and finance minister. His assurances that he would restore order and severely punish protesters who had attacked politicians’ homes during the unrest won him support from dozens of lawmakers loyal to Rajapaksa.

He cannot afford to seem soft on security: Islamic State-inspired terrorist bombings that killed 260 people in 2019 were largely blamed on intelligence failures stemming from fractured communication and friction between Wickremesinghe, then prime minister, and then-president Maithripala Sirisena.

Tourism was devastated. Then came the pandemic.

During his lengthy career Wickremesinghe has headed various government ministries, as has his new prime minister, Gunawardena.

The latter, whose father Philip Gunawardena helped lead Sri Lanka’s fight to gain independence from Britain, earned a business degree in the U.S. and worked in New York before returning to Sri Lanka when his father died.

Wickremesinghe has become the public face of Sri Lanka’s crisis, delivering weekly addresses in Parliament, raising taxes and pledging to overhaul a government that increasingly has concentrated power under the presidency – a trend that many believe helped tip the country into its current predicament.

It’s unclear if, now that he has gained the long-sought presidency, Wickremesinghe will back reforms to curb its powers.

He has been known to take the initiative at critical moments.

In 2002, he tried to end a yearslong civil war, signing a Norway-brokered peace agreement with rebels who were fighting to create an independent state for the ethnic Tamil minority. The cease-fire won Wickremesinghe international acclaim, enabling him to salvage an economy on the brink of collapse after Tamil Tiger fighters attacked the island’s only international airport and destroyed many aircraft.

But the pact angered Sinhala Buddhist nationalists who saw it as a betrayal, and the cease-fire failed to hold. Then-President Chandrika Kumaratunga sacked Wickremesinghe and his cabinet and called an election, which his party lost.

Wickremesinghe ran for president the next year, losing to nationalist Mahinda Rajapaksa. In 2009, Rajapaksa defeated the Tamil Tigers, becoming a national hero in the eyes of the majority Sinhala Buddhists. During most of the years since then, the Rajapaksa family has dominated Sri Lankan politics, appointing family and friends in key political and administrative positions.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) – South Korea plans to lift its decades-long ban on public access to North Korean television, newspapers and other media as part of its efforts to promote mutual understanding between the rivals, officials said Friday, despite animosities over the North’s recent missile tests.

Divided along the world’s most heavily fortified border since 1948, the two Koreas prohibit their citizens from visiting each other’s territory and exchanging phone calls, emails and letters, and they block access to each other’s websites and TV stations.

In a policy report to new President Yoon Suk Yeol on Friday, South Korea’s Unification Ministry said it will gradually open the door for North Korean broadcasts, media and publications to try to boost mutual understanding, restore the Korean national identity and prepare for a future unification.

Ministry officials said South Korea will start by allowing access to North Korean broadcasts to try to encourage North Korea to take similar steps. The ministry refused to provide further details, saying the plans are still being discussed with relevant authorities in South Korea.

Jeon Young-sun, a research professor at Seoul’s Konkuk University, said North Korea is unlikely to reciprocate because the flow of South Korean cultural and media content would pose “a really huge threat to” its authoritarian leadership.

Ruled by three generations of the Kim family since its 1948 foundation, North Korea strictly restricts its citizens’ access to outside information, though many defectors have said they watched smuggled South Korean TV programs while living in the North. In 2014, North Korean troops opened fire when South Korean activists launched balloons carrying USB sticks containing information about the outside world and leaflets critical of the Kim family toward North Korean territory.

Relations between the two Koreas remain strained over North Korea’s torrid run of missile tests this year. Yoon, a conservative, has said he would take a tougher stance on North Korean provocations, though he said he has “an audacious plan” to improve the North’s economy if it abandons its nuclear weapons.

Despite the North’s likely reluctance to reciprocate, Jeon said South Korea needs to ease its ban on North Korean media because the restrictions have led to dependence on foreigners and other governments to gather North Korea-related information. Jeon said that has increased the danger of acquiring distorted information on North Korea.

It wasn’t clear how anti-North Korea activists in the South would react to the government’s move. Jeon said there was little chance the move would promote pro-North Korean sentiments.

South Korea, the world’s 10th-largest economy, is a global cultural powerhouse. Its nominal gross domestic product in 2019 was 54 times bigger than that of North Korea, according to South Korean estimates.

Some observers say the ban must be lifted in a step-by-step process with discussions on what North Korean contents would be allowed first and how the access should be given to the South Korean public.

TOKYO (AP) — Japan’s nuclear regulator on Friday approved details of a planned release of treated radioactive wastewater from the wrecked Fukushima nuclear power plant into the sea next year.

The approval by the Nuclear Regulation Authority will enable Tokyo Electric Power Co. to start building necessary facilities ahead of the discharge. It came two months after a preliminary greenlight and a subsequent public review process.

Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings submitted the plan in December based on a government decision last year to release the wastewater as a necessary step for the plant’s ongoing decommissioning.

A massive earthquake and tsunami in 2011 destroyed the Fukushima Daiichi plant’s cooling systems, causing triple meltdowns and the release of large amounts of radiation. Water that was used to cool the three damaged reactor cores, which remain highly radioactive, has since leaked into basements of the reactor buildings but was collected and stored in tanks.

Local fishing communities and neighboring countries have raised concerns about potential health hazards from the radioactive wastewater, which TEPCO and government officials say will be treated to levels far below releasable standards. They maintain that the environmental and health impacts will be negligible.

Japan nuclear authority chairman Toyoshi Fuketa told reporters Friday that the release plan had no major technical or safety issues. He said the regulators will ensure approved procedures are strictly followed with transparency.

The government and TEPCO say that of more than 60 isotopes selected for treatment, all but one, tritium, will be reduced to meet safety standards. Scientists say impacts of long-term, low-dose exposure to tritium for the environment and humans are still unknown. Tritium affects humans more when it is consumed in fish, they say.

The contaminated water is being stored in about 1,000 tanks at the damaged plant. Officials say they must be removed so that facilities can be built for its decommissioning. The tanks are expected to reach their capacity of 1.37 million tons next year.

TEPCO said it plans to transport treated and releasable water through a pipeline from the tanks to a coastal facility, where it will be diluted with seawater and then sent through an undersea tunnel with an outlet about 1 kilometer (0.6 miles) away to minimize the impact on local fishing and the environment.

The government and TEPCO still need to gain local consent for building the tunnel and other related facilities. They plan to begin gradually releasing the treated water in spring 2023.

China on Friday renewed its protest over the planned wastewater release and urged Japan to carry out the disposal in “a scientific, open, transparent and safe manner.”

Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin demanded Japan “stop pushing the discharge plan before reaching a consensus with all stakeholders and relevant international agencies.”

Japan has sought help from the International Atomic Energy Agency to ensure the water release meets international safety standards and reassure local fishing and other communities and neighboring countries that have opposed the plan.

Experts from the IAEA visited the plant earlier this year and said Japan was taking appropriate steps for the planned discharge.

In a statement Friday, TEPCO pledged to sincerely respond to the IAEA reviews, ensure safety, provide data to the public and strengthen its radiation monitoring. The company also vowed to do its utmost to explain the water discharge plans and gain the public’s understanding about the decommissioning.

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LONDON (AP) — Prince Harry can take the British government to court over his security arrangements in the U.K., a judge in London ruled Friday.

Harry and his wife Meghan lost publicly funded U.K. police protection when they stepped down as senior working royals and moved to North America in 2020. The prince wants to pay personally for police security when he comes to Britain and is challenging the government’s refusal to permit it.

Judge Jonathan Swift ruled Friday that the case can go to a full hearing at the High Court in London. He refused some aspects of the challenge but said some grounds “give rise to an arguable case” that deserves a hearing.

The judge said “a conclusion at the permission stage that a case is arguable is some distance from a conclusion that the case will succeed at final hearing.”

A date has not been set for the case to be heard.

Harry and the former actress Meghan Markle married at Windsor Castle in 2019 but stepped down as working royals the following year, citing what they described as unbearable intrusions and racist attitudes of the British media.

Harry’s lawyers have said the prince is reluctant to bring the couple’s children — Archie, 3, and 1-year-old Lilibet — to his homeland because it is not safe.

Harry, also known as the Duke of Sussex, wants to be able to pay for the protection, saying his private security team in the U.S. doesn’t have adequate jurisdiction abroad or access to U.K. intelligence information.

His lawyers also say a February 2020 decision by the Executive Committee for the Protection of Royalty and Public Figures, removing his full royal security, was unreasonable because Harry was not allowed to make “informed representations beforehand.”

BAMAKO, Mali (AP) — Explosions and gunfire were heard early Friday morning in the area of the Kati military base on the outskirts of Mali’s capital city Bamako, according to local residents, in a suspected attack by Islamic extremists.

The military has cordoned off the roads to Kati, about 15 kilometers (10 miles) northwest of Bamako.

The leader of Mali‘s ruling junta Lt. Col. Assimi Goita frequently stays at the Kati camp, where he launched the 2020 coup that brought him to power.

Jihadi rebels linked to al Qaeda and the Islamic State group have been fighting an insurgency in the West African country for more than 10 years. Their attacks have mostly been in northern Mali, but recently the extremists have moved into central Mali. In recent weeks, they have moved closer to the capital.

Last week gunmen attacked an army checkpoint about 60 kilometers outside Bamako, killing at least six people and wounding several others, officials said.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack, but it appears to be by the al-Qaida-linked rebel group known as JNIM that has carried out several other attacks around Bamako.

The attacks show “how the al-Qaida affiliate Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin continues to expand its operations outside its traditional strongholds in northern and central Mali,” said Héni Nsaibia, a senior researcher at The Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project.

“As in other Sahelian countries such as Burkina Faso and Niger … major cities including the capitals themselves, are increasingly surrounded by a steady spread of Islamist militancy that poses an ever-increasing risk and challenge to the security environment.”

Mali has struggled to contain an Islamic extremist insurgency since 2012. Extremist rebels were forced from power in Mali’s northern cities with the help of a French-led military operation, but they regrouped in the desert and began attacking the Malian army and its allies. Insecurity has worsened with attacks in the northern and central regions.