HONG KONG
Joshua Wong attacked
Student leader Joshua Wong (黃之鋒), the face of the territory’s pro-democracy protests last year, was assaulted in the street with his girlfriend, late on Sunday as they left a movie theater near Mong Kok. A man punched Wong, 18, in the face and when he and his girlfriend gave chase both were assaulted, he said on his Facebook page. Police said they had yet to make an arrest, confirming that Wong had “suddenly been attacked” by a suspect in his 20s and had sustained injuries to his eyes and nose. “[The assault] implies activists are facing the danger of attacks in their daily lives, not only during protests. This is what sends a chill to my heart,” Wong wrote in an emotional Facebook post. “It’s not only a problem with universal suffrage — it’s about the limited freedom and legal system slowly being obliterated by these violent acts. The road ahead is long and tough, but we should retain our goal and keep walking on this bumpy road of democracy.”
CHINA
Rights activist arrested
Authorities have formally arrested and charged a prominent rights activist who had called for official accountability over what he said were miscarriages of justice, his lawyer said yesterday. Wu Gan (吳幹), a 43-year-old online free speech advocate, was charged with causing a disturbance, defamation and “inciting subversion of state power,” his lawyer Yan Wenxin (燕文薪) said. Wu, better known by his moniker “Super Vulgar Butcher,” was detained last month after he had called for official accountability after a police officer shot and killed a civilian in Heilongjiang Province.
JAPAN
Solar plane heads to Hawaii
Swiss pilot Andre Borschberg yesterday began an attempt to fly five days and nights in a single-man solar-powered plane after weather delays reduced the chances of achieving a multileg round-the-world flight this year. Borschberg took off in Solar Impulse from Nagoya at 3:03am for Hawaii. “The real moment of truth lies ahead,” Borschberg said in a statement. “We are now at the point in the round-the-world solar flight where everything comes together.” The attempt to fly around the world began in Abu Dhabi in March.
PHILIPPINES
NPA commander killed
The military has shot dead New People’s Army (NPA) commander Leonardo Pitao in a blow to one of the world’s longest-running Maoist insurgencies, authorities said yesterday. Pitao was killed on Sunday in a mountainous hamlet near Davao by army special forces, the military said. “He’s an NPA idol, and now they will see how the long arm of the law finally caught up with their leader,” Major-General Eduardo Ano told reporters. “This is not only going to be a big setback; this is going to be what you call the fall of the NPA in the Davao region.”
SOUTH KOREA
No new MERS cases
The government yesterday reported no new cases of Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) or deaths from the virus for the first time in nine days, but officials said there was no indication yet that the outbreak had been brought under control. The number of those infected with MERS remained unchanged for two days in a row at 182, and he death toll remained unchanged from 32 on Sunday, the Ministry of Health and Welfare said. It is the first time that the country has reported no additional infections as well as no new deaths since June 20. A total of 2,682 people remain under quarantine.
ISRAEL
Activist to end hunger strike
A Palestinian held without charges for the past year is ending a 55-day hunger strike and in exchange is to be released in two weeks, his wife and an advocacy group for prisoners said yesterday. Rights groups have said that Khader Adnan, 36, a senior activist in the militant Islamic Jihad group, is near death. Israel Prisons Service spokeswoman Sivan Weizman confirmed that Adnan agreed to end his hunger strike as part of a deal, but had no details. It marked the second hunger strike for Adnan whose protests have trained a spotlight on so-called administrative detention, a practice under which Palestinians can be held without trial or charges. Under a deal reached late on Sunday, Adnan ends his hunger strike and is to be released on July 12, said Kadoura Fares of the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club, an advocacy group.
FRANCE
Suspect admits killing boss
The suspected Muslim militant who attempted to blow up a chemical plant on Friday has admitted killing his manager beforehand, a source close to the investigation said on Sunday, as police linked the suspect to a militant now in Syria. Yassin Salhi, 35, told detectives he killed Herve Cornara in a parking area before arriving at the plant in Saint Quentin-Fallavier, 30km south of Lyon, where he tried in vain to cause a major explosion. Police found the 54-year-old victim’s decapitated body and head, framed by Islamic inscriptions, at the plant, which is owned by US firm Air Products. Flanked by heavily armed police in masks and flak jackets, Salhi on Sunday was taken to the car park where he said he had killed Cornara, before retracing the route he had followed to the chemical plant. He was then escorted to the apartment he shared with his wife and three children in the Lyon suburb of Saint-Priest, where further searches were carried out.
KUWAIT
Mosque security mulled
Authorities in Persian Gulf nations are weighing additional security measures after a suicide bomber killed 26 worshipers at Kuwait City’s Imam al-Sadeq Shiite mosque last week. The Cabinet is to discuss adding new security laws after Friday’s attack, state-run Kuna news agency reported yesterday, while Bahrain is studying installing security cameras at places of worship. Saudi officials are to install security cameras at “important mosques” in each region, Saudi newspaper Okaz reported on Sunday. Authorities have identified the suicide bomber as Fahad Suleiman Abdulmohsen al-Gabbaa, a Saudi national born in 1992. At least three suspects have been arrested, including the man who drove al-Gabbaa to the mosque and the owner of the house where the driver was staying, Kuwait’s Kuna news agency reported. The Ministry of the Interior said the man who drove the bomber to the mosque was an “illegal resident.”
UKRAINE
Rebels block Dutch officials
Pro-Russian separatist leaders in the eastern region of Luhansk have blocked access to Dutch law enforcement officials pursuing an investigation into the downing of a Malaysian jetliner nearly a year ago, the Dutch Public Prosecution Office said. The obstruction by separatist officials prompted the investigators, from the Dutch National Police and Ministry of Defense, to cut short their field work without conducting research into cellphone towers and cellular networks in the region, the public prosecution office said on Saturday.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
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