■Hong Kong
Mugabe goes shopping
Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe spent the weekend shopping for high-end suits and shoes in the territory where he owns a house and his daughter attends university, local media reported yesterday. Mugabe’s shopping trip came several days after he visited the World Expo in Shanghai for Zimbabwe Day. China is not party to international sanctions on Mugabe, who is the subject of a Western travel ban and asset freeze. A team of officers from the police VIP protection unit flanked the octogenarian president on Saturday as he visited high-end shops in the Kowloon district, media said. Mugabe’s daughter Bona studies accounting at City University and he owns a home in the New Territories, the Sunday Morning Post reported.
■Sri Lanka
General appeals conviction
Former army General Sarath Fonseka will appeal a court martial conviction that stripped him of his rank, pension and prestige, his political party announced yesterday. President Mahinda Rajapakse formally removed Fonseka’s rank and medals and stopped his pension on Saturday, a day after a court martial found him guilty of engaging in politics while in uniform. “We do not accept the court martial process, but we are going to appeal to a civilian court against this decision,” said Anura Kumara Dissanayake, legislator and spokesman for Fonseka’s Democratic National Alliance. The former four-star general, who quit the military in November last year to become an opposition politician, challenged Rajapakse for the presidency in January elections. Two weeks after his defeat at the polls, he was arrested and taken into military custody.
■China
Tiger mauls keeper to death
A Siberian tiger mauled a keeper to death after being left to roam the cage as it was being cleaned, state media said yesterday. Zhan Guanshun was attacked by the tiger while cleaning the cage at a wildlife rescue center in Anhui Province on Saturday, the Anhui News reported. The tiger bit Zhan’s neck, inflicting fatal injuries, the report said. Beijing says it has nearly 6,000 tigers in captivity, with just 50 to 60 left in the wild, including about 20 wild Siberian tigers. In the 1980s, tiger farms were set up to try and preserve the big cats, intending to release some into the wild, but those farms have since come under the international spotlight, with some conservation groups saying they use the animals for their parts.
■Nepal
Protests cause standstill
A group representing indigenous communities brought much of the country to a standstill yesterday as it protested parliament’s failure to draft a new constitution. Shops and offices closed and most vehicles remained off roads across the country, where Sunday is usually a work day, after the group called a nationwide general strike. Police said they had detained 60 people in Kathmandu, where some vehicles were vandalized, although the protest was mostly peaceful. “We want the political parties to get serious about writing a new constitution for the country,” said Raj Kumar Lekhi, chairman of the Nepal Federation of Indigenous Nationalities. “We want them to guarantee rights for Nepal’s ethnic minorities.” Parliament was elected in May 2008 with a two-year mandate to write a new constitution and complete the peace process that began when the civil war between Maoist rebels and the state ended in 2006.
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese