Russian State Duma approves Mikhail Mishustin for post of prime minister

20:36, January 16, 2020

• 

  Putin signs decree to appoint Mikhail Mishustin as prime minister -- Kremlin

  A screen shows the results of the vote on Mikhail Mishustins nomination as the new prime minister during a session of the State Duma lower parliament in Moscow on January 16, 2020. (Photo: AFP)MOSCOW, Jan. 16 (Xinhua) -- Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree to appoint Mikhail Mishustin as new prime minister, the Kremlin said Thursday.

• 

  Putin nominates Mishustin for prime minister

  (File photo: AFP)MOSCOW, Jan. 15 (Xinhua) -- Russian President Vladimir Putin has named Federal Tax Service chief Mikhail Mishustin as Russias new prime minister, the Kremlin said Wednesday."Vladimir Putin held a working meeting with the head of the Federal Tax Service, Mikhail Mishustin, during which he invited him to take the post of prime minister," it said in a statement."With the consent, he submitted the candidacy of M. Mishustin for consideration by the State Duma," it added.Earlier, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev announced the resignation of his government.The decision was announced after Putin addressed the Federal Assembly.

• 

  Australian prime minister's approval rating slumps as bushfires rage

  (Photo: CGTN)The Australian bushfires issue is an inevitably politicized one as the whole continent has been on the grill for four months. The latest polling shows that Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrisons approval rating has declined sharply in the face of the horrendous natural disaster which has so far killed 28 people and destroyed 2,000 homes.Morrison has come under attack for being slow to respond to the unprecedented crisis - he even took a family holiday to Hawaii while fires were burning - and acknowledged on Sunday he had made some mistakes."There are things I could have handled on the ground much better," he said in an interview with Australian Broadcasting Corp on Sunday.After months of raging bushfires that have ravaged more than 10.3 million hectares of land, an area roughly the size of South Korea, Morrison in early January announced a two billion Australian dollars (about 1.4 billion US dollar) bushfire recovery fund and called on 3,000 army reservists to back up state emergency workers.But this response has been seen as too slow. The Newspoll, conducted from Wednesday to Saturday after those announcements, showed Morrisons approval rating dropped eight points to the lowest level since he took over leadership of the Liberal Party in August 2018.His approval rating was overtaken by opposition Labor leader Anthony Albanese in the poll, which surveyed 1,505 voters.Labor also overtook Morrisons Liberal-National Coalition on a two-party preferred basis, where votes for minor parties are distributed between the major parties, for the first time since Australias election last May. No margin of error was provided, although it was about 2.5 percentage points in previous Newspolls.The same poll last year, however, incorrectly predicted Labor would win the election.Morrison said on Sunday he would take a proposal to Cabinet to hold aRoyal Commission national inquiryinto the bushfires, including examining the respon...