WASHINGTON/BEIRUT/JERUSALEM  — A ceasefire between Israel and Iran-backed group Hezbollah came into effect at 0200 GMT on Wednesday after US President Joseph R. Biden said both sides accepted an agreement brokered by the United States and France.

Bursts of gunfire could be heard across Beirut after the ceasefire took effect. It was not immediately clear if the shooting was celebratory, as gunfire had also been used to alert residents who may have missed evacuation warnings issued by Israel’s military.

Streams of cars carrying people displaced from southern Lebanon by Israeli strikes in recent months began heading back to the area after the ceasefire, according to Reuters witnesses.

The ceasefire promises to end a conflict across the Israeli-Lebanese border that has killed thousands of people since it was ignited by the Gaza war last year.

Mr. Biden spoke at the White House on Tuesday shortly after Israel’s security cabinet approved the agreement in a 10-1 vote. He said he had spoken to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Lebanon’s caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati, and that fighting would end at 4 a.m. local time (0200 GMT).

“This is designed to be a permanent cessation of hostilities,” Mr. Biden said. “What is left of Hezbollah and other terrorist organizations will not be allowed to threaten the security of Israel again.”

Israel will gradually withdraw its forces over 60 days as Lebanon’s army takes control of territory near its border with Israel to ensure that Hezbollah does not rebuild its infrastructure there, Biden said.

“Civilians on both sides will soon be able to safely return to their communities,” he said.

Hezbollah has not formally commented on the ceasefire but senior official Hassan Fadlallah told Lebanon’s Al Jadeed TV that while it supported the extension of the Lebanese state’s authority, the group would emerge from the war stronger.

“Thousands will join the resistance … Disarming the resistance was an Israeli proposal that fell through,” said Fadlallah, who is also a member of Lebanon’s parliament.

Iran, which backs Hezbollah, the Palestinian group Hamas as well as the Houthi rebels that have attacked Israel from Yemen, said it welcomed the ceasefire.

French President Emmanuel Macron said on social media platform X the deal was “the culmination of efforts undertaken for many months with the Israeli and Lebanese authorities, in close collaboration with the United States.”

Lebanon’s Mr. Mikati issued a statement welcoming the deal. Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib said the Lebanese army would have at least 5,000 troops deployed in southern Lebanon as Israeli troops withdrew.

Mr. Netanyahu said he was ready to implement a ceasefire but would respond forcefully to any violation by Hezbollah.

He said the ceasefire would allow Israel to focus on the threat from Iran, give the army an opportunity to rest and replenish supplies, and isolate Hamas, the Islamist militant group that triggered war in the region when it attacked Israel from Gaza last year.

‘SET IT BACK DECADES’
“In full coordination with the United States, we retain complete military freedom of action. Should Hezbollah violate the agreement or attempt to rearm, we will strike decisively,” Netanyahu said.

Hezbollah, which is allied to Hamas, was considerably weaker than it had been at the start of the conflict, he added.

“We have set it back decades, eliminated… its top leaders, destroyed most of its rockets and missiles, neutralized thousands of fighters, and obliterated years of terror infrastructure near our border,” he said.

A senior US official, briefing reporters on condition of anonymity, said the US and France would join a mechanism with the UNIFIL peacekeeping force that would work with Lebanon’s army to deter potential violations of the ceasefire. US combat forces would not be deployed, the official said.

Jon Finer, deputy national security adviser in the Biden administration, told CNN that Washington would be watching for any violations of the deal.

“Implementation of this agreement will be key and we will be very vigilant to any attempts to disrupt what the two parties have committed to as part of this process today,” he said.

Mr. Biden, who leaves office in January, said his administration would continue to push for an elusive ceasefire and hostage-release deal in Gaza, as well as for a deal to normalize relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia.

In the hours leading up to the ceasefire, hostilities raged as Israel ramped up its campaign of airstrikes in Beirut and other parts of Lebanon, with health authorities reporting at least 18 killed.

The Israeli military said it struck “components of Hezbollah’s financial management and systems” including a money-exchange office.

Hezbollah also kept up rocket fire into Israel.

Israel’s air force intercepted three launches from Lebanese territory, the military said, in an extensive missile barrage on Tuesday night that led to warning alarms in about 115 settlements.

Alia Ibrahim, a mother of twin girls from the southern village of Qaaqaiyat al-Snawbar, who had fled nearly three months ago to Beirut, said she hoped Israeli officials, who have expressed contradictory views on a ceasefire, would be faithful to the deal.

“Our village — they destroyed half of it. In these few seconds before they announced the ceasefire, they destroyed half our village,” she said. “God willing, we can go back to our homes and our land.”

A poll conducted by Israel’s Channel 12 TV found that 37% of Israelis were in favor of the ceasefire, compared with 32% against.

Opponents to the deal in Israel include opposition leaders and heads of towns near Israel’s border with Lebanon, who want a depopulated buffer zone on Lebanon’s side of the frontier.

Both the Lebanese government and Hezbollah have insisted that a return of displaced civilians to southern Lebanon is a key tenet of the truce.

Israeli Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, a right-wing member of Netanyahu’s government, said on X the agreement did not ensure the return of Israelis to their homes in the country’s north and that the Lebanese army did not have the ability to overcome Hezbollah.

“In order to leave Lebanon, we must have our own security belt,” Ben-Gvir said. — Reuters

KUALA LUMPUR — A Malaysian court on Wednesday allowed corruption charges linked to the multibillion-dollar 1MDB scandal filed against jailed former Prime Minister (PM) Najib Razak and the former treasury chief to be dropped, their lawyers said.

Najib faces several trials linked to the scandal at state fund 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB), from which Malaysian and U.S. authorities say about $4.5 billion was stolen in a complex, globe-spanning scheme between 2009 and 2014.

Najib, who helped found 1MDB when he was premier in 2009, was found guilty of corruption and money laundering in a case linked to the scandal and sentenced to 12 years in prison in 2022, though the term was later halved by a pardon’s board chaired by Malaysia’s king.

He last month apologized for his role in mishandling the 1MDB scandal, though he maintained he had no knowledge of any illegal transfers from the state fund.

Najib and former treasury secretary-general Irwan Serigar Abdullah had been charged in 2018 with six counts of criminal breach of trust involving government funds worth 6.6 billion ringgit ($1.48 billion), which officials have said were related to a settlement agreement between 1MDB and Abu Dhabi state fund International Petroleum Investment Company.

The pair consistently denied wrongdoing.

The Kuala Lumpur High Court granted their bid for a discharge not amounting to an acquittal, due to procedural delays and the failure of the prosecution to disclose key documents, their lawyers said.

“The court correctly exercised its jurisdiction to discharge our client of the charges, consonant with the law,” Najib’s lawyer Muhammad Farhan Muhammad Shafee said in a text message.

The decision is likely to prompt further questions over the remaining cases against Najib, after prosecutors last year did not appeal his acquittal in a separate 1MDB-related case.

That came amid accusations that current Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, who was voted in two years ago on an anti-corruption platform, is backsliding on promised reforms. Anwar has said he remains committed to tackling graft but does not interfere in court cases.

Najib has also been pushing to serve the remainder of his sentence under house arrest, and has filed a case to compel the government to confirm the existence of a royal order that he says would allow him to do so.

Anwar’s government said last month it would introduce a law allowing house arrest for some offences next year, though it denied that was aimed at getting Najib or other politicians accused of corruption out of jail. — Reuters

MINH KHAI, Vietnam — Countless discarded bags float on the canal running through Minh Khai village, whose narrow streets are clogged with tall heaps of plastic waste spilling out from villagers’ front yards and stacked near furnaces where non-recyclable scrap is burned.

This so-called plastic recycling “craft village,” an hour’s drive from Vietnam’s capital Hanoi, is where some of the plastic sorted for recycling in Japan, America and Europe ends up for final treatment.

Delegates at a United Nations (UN) summit in South Korea this week are discussing new global rules that could limit that trade, which UN data show were worth $3.8 billion last year. Stricter domestic requirements on waste imports will also be applicable in Vietnam from next year.

The Southeast Asian nation has emerged as a major importer of plastic scrap in recent years after China, once the top player in the industry, banned imports in 2018. Vietnam was the world’s fourth-largest importer in 2022, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

But that surge in imports has taken place as the country is struggling to recycle even its own plastic waste.

Additional restrictions could reduce the trade but the large size of the domestic informal industry may make it hard to monitor commercial flows and recycling rates, experts and officials said.

FROM SORTING TO LANDFILLS
More than one quarter of Vietnam’s plastic recycling capacity is concentrated in craft villages like Minh Khai, the World Bank said in a 2021 report, noting that spare capacity to process imported plastic amounted to 300,000 metric tons.

That was well short of the 420,000 tons of plastic scrap Vietnam imported last year, which was up 11% from 2022, according to UN data, which does not capture the entire volume.

Vietnam’s environment ministry did not reply to requests for updated figures.

Researchers have found that recycling is being hampered by the inability to properly sort plastic waste, both offshore and in Vietnam. Only 30% of plastic waste generated in Vietnam is sorted, said a government-backed WWF report in 2023.

As a result, in spite of shipment costs, Vietnam’s recyclers rely on higher-quality foreign plastic scrap, according to FiinGroup, a research firm.

But estimates suggest Vietnam recycles only up to one-third of the imported plastic waste, said a research paper published in January.

That is partly because some imported plastic is often mixed with organic waste that makes it hard or impossible to treat, said one of the paper’s authors, Kaustubh Thapa, from the Netherlands’ Utrecht University.

A recycler at Minh Khai village was more upbeat. “The amount of imported waste that can’t be recycled is often about 5% of the volume, but at times it goes up to 25%,” said Chi, who declined to give his full name.

Most people contacted in the village in person or by phone declined to talk to media for fear of repercussions on their activities.

Much of the unrecycled plastic is dumped in “unsanitary” landfills, and about 15% of that is directly released into the environment and the oceans, the WWF report said.

“Exporting waste for recycling to destinations without sound recycling capacity raises questions of fairness and sustainability,” concluded the research paper by Thapa and co-authors. — Reuters