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.
Former Nicaraguan president Violeta Chamorro, who brought peace to Nicaragua after years of war and was the first woman elected president in the Americas, died on Saturday at the age of 95, her family said. Chamorro, who ruled the poor Central American country from 1990 to 1997, “died in peace, surrounded by the affection and love of her children,” said a statement issued by her four children. As president, Chamorro ended a civil war that had raged for much of the 1980s as US-backed rebels known as the “Contras” fought the leftist Sandinista government. That conflict made Nicaragua one of
COMPETITION: The US and Russia make up about 90 percent of the world stockpile and are adding new versions, while China’s nuclear force is steadily rising, SIPRI said Most of the world’s nuclear-armed states continued to modernize their arsenals last year, setting the stage for a new nuclear arms race, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said yesterday. Nuclear powers including the US and Russia — which account for about 90 percent of the world’s stockpile — had spent time last year “upgrading existing weapons and adding newer versions,” researchers said. Since the end of the Cold War, old warheads have generally been dismantled quicker than new ones have been deployed, resulting in a decrease in the overall number of warheads. However, SIPRI said that the trend was likely
BOMBARDMENT: Moscow sent more than 440 drones and 32 missiles, Volodymyr Zelenskiy said, in ‘one of the most terrifying strikes’ on the capital in recent months A nighttime Russian missile and drone bombardment of Ukraine killed at least 15 people and injured 116 while they slept in their homes, local officials said yesterday, with the main barrage centering on the capital, Kyiv. Kyiv City Military Administration head Tymur Tkachenko said 14 people were killed and 99 were injured as explosions echoed across the city for hours during the night. The bombardment demolished a nine-story residential building, destroying dozens of apartments. Emergency workers were at the scene to rescue people from under the rubble. Russia flung more than 440 drones and 32 missiles at Ukraine, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy
Indonesia’s Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki yesterday erupted again with giant ash and smoke plumes after forcing evacuations of villages and flight cancelations, including to and from the resort island of Bali. Several eruptions sent ash up to 5km into the sky on Tuesday evening to yesterday afternoon. An eruption on Tuesday afternoon sent thick, gray clouds 10km into the sky that expanded into a mushroom-shaped ash cloud visible as much as 150km kilometers away. The eruption alert was raised on Tuesday to the highest level and the danger zone where people are recommended to leave was expanded to 8km from the crater. Officers also
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