CHINA
Activist lawyer’s aide held
Police have taken away the aide of prominent lawyer Pu Zhiqiang (浦志強), who was detained last week in a government clampdown on activists ahead of the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protests, an attorney said yesterday. Pu’s aide, Qu Zhenhong, who is also his niece, was recently detained by Beijing police on suspicion of “illegally obtaining personal information,” said Zhang Sizhi (張思之), a veteran rights lawyer who is Pu’s attorney. Activists said police took two other people away in relation to the investigation into Pu, including an employee of leading Japanese newspaper, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun. The newspaper’s office in Tokyo said it was investigating the situation. The employee is not believed to be a Japanese journalist. Authorities placed Pu under criminal detention last week after he attended a forum on the June 4, 1989, crackdown on demonstrators in Tiananmen Square. Several other dissidents who attended the forum were also detained and accused of “creating a disturbance,” a vague charge increasingly used against government critics. Also detained by police was Chen Guang (陳光), a former People’s Liberation Army soldier who was deployed in 1989 to help clear out the protesters. Chen later became a painter and publicly urged authorities to allow for unfettered discussions of the crackdown.
SINGAPORE
PAP hits back over video fail
The People’s Action Party (PAP) has defended a promotional video produced by its youth wing that went viral after being lambasted online for its amateurish quality and “robotic” feel. The five-minute YouTube video clip, titled “Re-ignite the Passion of Servant Leadership,” featured youth leaders of the long-ruling party espousing a series of motivational messages. Some appeared to be reading from a script placed on either side of the camera. One segment featured a woman and a man clad in the all-white party uniform holding miniature toy guitars, as others around them took turns to complete a sentence: “We must empower our members... to make a positive impact... to those around us.” In a statement, the party said the effort by the Young PAP was “genuine and sincere.” “We did not expect that our humble [raw and unpolished] in-house production would go viral like this,” it said on Facebook on Wednesday. The video continued to draw a steady stream of derision yesterday, with local comedian Hirzi Zulkiflie writing “And here kids, you find yourself a bunch of brainwashed young adults. They even sound like robots. Amazing,” on Facebook, while another user wrote: “Sad to see youth talking like parrots, reading script and with bad diction/pronunciation.”
AUSTRALIA
MH370 search put on hold
The hunt for Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 in the Indian Ocean was put on hold yesterday after technical issues with a US Navy mini-submarine that require spare parts to be sent from Britain. The Joint Agency Coordination Agency, which is leading the search, said on Wednesday that the Bluefin-21 submersible lasted only two hours in the water this week before it had to be raised. The center blamed “communications problems” for the aborted mission and after a more thorough examination, announced that spare parts are needed before the sophisticated mini-sub can be used again. The jet vanished on March 8 with 239 people on board. It is believed to have crashed far off the country’s west coast after mysteriously diverting from its Kuala Lumpur-Beijing route. No wreckage has been found, despite a massive international search.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing