■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.
RARE EVENT: While some cultures have a negative view of eclipses, others see them as a chance to show how people can work together, a scientist said Stargazers across a swathe of the world marveled at a dramatic red “Blood Moon” during a rare total lunar eclipse in the early hours of yesterday morning. The celestial spectacle was visible in the Americas and Pacific and Atlantic oceans, as well as in the westernmost parts of Europe and Africa. The phenomenon happens when the sun, Earth and moon line up, causing our planet to cast a giant shadow across its satellite. But as the Earth’s shadow crept across the moon, it did not entirely blot out its white glow — instead the moon glowed a reddish color. This is because the
DEBT BREAK: Friedrich Merz has vowed to do ‘whatever it takes’ to free up more money for defense and infrastructure at a time of growing geopolitical uncertainty Germany’s likely next leader Friedrich Merz was set yesterday to defend his unprecedented plans to massively ramp up defense and infrastructure spending in the Bundestag as lawmakers begin debating the proposals. Merz unveiled the plans last week, vowing his center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU)/Christian Social Union (CSU) bloc and the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) — in talks to form a coalition after last month’s elections — would quickly push them through before the end of the current legislature. Fraying Europe-US ties under US President Donald Trump have fueled calls for Germany, long dependent on the US security umbrella, to quickly
Romania’s electoral commission on Saturday excluded a second far-right hopeful, Diana Sosoaca, from May’s presidential election, amid rising tension in the run-up to the May rerun of the poll. Earlier this month, Romania’s Central Electoral Bureau barred Calin Georgescu, an independent who was polling at about 40 percent ahead of the rerun election. Georgescu, a fierce EU and NATO critic, shot to prominence in November last year when he unexpectedly topped a first round of presidential voting. However, Romania’s constitutional court annulled the election after claims of Russian interference and a “massive” social media promotion in his favor. On Saturday, an electoral commission statement
Chinese authorities increased pressure on CK Hutchison Holdings Ltd over its plan to sell its Panama ports stake by sharing a second newspaper commentary attacking the deal. The Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office on Saturday reposted a commentary originally published in Ta Kung Pao, saying the planned sale of the ports by the Hong Kong company had triggered deep concerns among Chinese people and questioned whether the deal was harming China and aiding evil. “Why were so many important ports transferred to ill-intentioned US forces so easily? What kind of political calculations are hidden in the so-called commercial behavior on the
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