CHINA
Space lab to return
China’s crewed space lab Tiangong-2 has finished experiments and is to re-enter the atmosphere on Friday, authorities said yesterday. A small amount of debris is likely to fall into designated safe waters of the South Pacific Ocean, the China Manned Space Engineering Office said in a statement. The nation launched Tiangong-2 on Sept. 15, 2016, after Tiangong-1, its first crewed space lab.
UNITED NATIONS
States support China
Saudi Arabia, Russia and 35 other states have written to the UN supporting China’s policies in its western region of Xinjiang, according to a copy of the letter seen by reporters on Friday. China has been accused of detaining 1 million Muslims and persecuting ethnic Uighurs in Xinjiang, and 22 ambassadors signed a letter to the UN Human Rights Council this week criticizing its policies. However, the letter supporting China commended what it called the nation’s remarkable achievements in the field of human rights. “Faced with the grave challenge of terrorism and extremism, China has undertaken a series of counter-terrorism and deradicalization measures in Xinjiang, including setting up vocational education and training centers,” the letter said. Security had returned to Xinjiang and the fundamental human rights of people of all ethnic groups there had been safeguarded, it said. There had been no terrorist attack there for three years and people enjoyed a stronger sense of happiness, fulfillment and security, it said. As well as Saudi Arabia and Russia, the letter was signed by ambassadors from many African countries, North Korea, Venezuela, Cuba, Belarus, Myanmar, the Philippines, Syria, Pakistan, Oman, Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.
INDONESIA
Widodo meets Subianto
President Joko Widodo, who secured a second term in office, met his rival Prabowo Subianto for the first time since a divisive election in April as the two attempt to put a feud behind them. The politicians boarded a train from southern Jakarta to the central business district yesterday. In televised speeches after the ride on the new rail network, Jokowi, as the president is known, reiterated a call for unity among Indonesians, while Prabowo congratulated him for his election victory. Prabowo had rejected the election outcome after Jokowi was declared the winner in May and claimed victory himself. In an interview on Friday, Widodo vowed to implement a wave of reforms to attract foreign investment as he looks to unleash the potential of Southeast Asia’s biggest economy during his second term in office.
MALAYSIA
Tourist killed in cave
Flash floods killed a Dutch tourist in a cave in Mulu National Park on Borneo Island, an official said yesterday, as a search continued for a missing guide. Local fire and rescue chief Law Poh Kiong identified the dead man as 66-year-old Peter Hans Hovenkamp from Utrecht in the central Netherlands. “He died due to drowning following flash floods in the caves. His body was found in a river inside the cave and was taken to the Miri public hospital for a post-mortem on Saturday,” he told reporters. Law said a search-and-rescue operation involving 16 officers had been launched to locate tour guide Roviezal Robin. Eight other tourists in the same group “almost became victims,” but fled to higher ground and escaped from being washed into the river, Law said.
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema
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
‘DISAPPEARED COMPLETELY’: The melting of thousands of glaciers is a major threat to people in the landlocked region that already suffers from a water shortage Near a wooden hut high up in the Kyrgyz mountains, scientist Gulbara Omorova walked to a pile of gray rocks, reminiscing how the same spot was a glacier just a few years ago. At an altitude of 4,000m, the 35-year-old researcher is surrounded by the giant peaks of the towering Tian Shan range that also stretches into China, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The area is home to thousands of glaciers that are melting at an alarming rate in Central Asia, already hard-hit by climate change. A glaciologist, Omarova is recording that process — worried about the future. She hiked six hours to get to
The number of people in Japan aged 100 or older has hit a record high of more than 95,000, almost 90 percent of whom are women, government data showed yesterday. The figures further highlight the slow-burning demographic crisis gripping the world’s fourth-biggest economy as its population ages and shrinks. As of Sept. 1, Japan had 95,119 centenarians, up 2,980 year-on-year, with 83,958 of them women and 11,161 men, the Japanese Ministry of Health said in a statement. On Sunday, separate government data showed that the number of over-65s has hit a record high of 36.25 million, accounting for 29.3 percent of