AUSTRALIA
PM dismisses N Korea letter
Prime Minister Malclom Turnbull has dismissed an extraordinary letter from North Korea to the parliament and other countries as a “rant” against US President Donald Trump and a sign that Pyongyang is “starting to feel the squeeze” of escalated sanctions. The letter from the North Korean Foreign Affairs Committee attacks Trump over his speech to the UN General Assembly last month in which Trump threatened to “totally destroy North Korea” if provoked. Turnbull yesterday told Melbourne Radio 3AW that the letter was sent to “a lot of other countries” as well as Australia. The letter says that if Trump thinks that he will bring North Korea “to its knees through nuclear war threat, it will be a big miscalculation and an expression of ignorance.”
COLOMBIA
Court orders treasure return
The Constitutional Court on Thursday ordered the government to recover more than 120 pieces of indigenous treasure given to the Spanish royal family by Colombia’s president in the 19th century. According to the High Court, the gift violated the constitution, which states an item of cultural importance cannot be given away. It ordered the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to undertake all necessary negotiations to bring back the pre-Colombian artifacts from the Quimbaya civilization, known for their gold work. In 1893, then-president Carlos Holguin gifted the pieces — part of a collection of more than 400 pieces including masks and human figures — to Spanish queen regent Maria Cristina de Habsburgo-Lorena. “Holguin gifted the treasure to the queen of Spain, as she had helped him with a boundary dispute we had with Venezuela,” Quindio Academy of History professor Jaime Lopera said. “He should not have given away that treasure, since it was bought with the nation’s money and belonged to the national heritage,” he added.
CHINA
British official summoned
China has summoned a British official in Beijing and lodged “stern representations” about recent comments from London expressing concern about a British rights activist being denied entry to Hong Kong, it said yesterday. Ben Rogers, a cofounder of the UK’s Conservative Party Human Rights Commission, has been a vocal critic of Chinese-ruled Hong Kong’s treatment of human rights activists, including that of jailed student protest leader Joshua Wong (黃之鋒). He was denied entry to Hong Kong on Wednesday last week. Britain on Tuesday said it had summoned the Chinese ambassador to express its concern. Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Lu Kang (陸慷) reiterated that Hong Kong is part of China and the central government handles Hong Kong’s foreign affairs and Beijing and Hong Kong decide who to let in or not as a matter of Chinese sovereignty.
PARLIAMENT CHAOS: Police forcibly removed Brazilian Deputy Glauber Braga after he called the legislation part of a ‘coup offensive’ and occupied the speaker’s chair Brazil’s lower house of Congress early yesterday approved a bill that could slash former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro’s prison sentence for plotting a coup, after efforts by a lawmaker to disrupt the proceedings sparked chaos in parliament. Bolsonaro has been serving a 27-year term since last month after his conviction for a scheme to stop Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva from taking office after the 2022 election. Lawmakers had been discussing a bill that would significantly reduce sentences for several crimes, including attempting a coup d’etat — opening up the prospect that Bolsonaro, 70, could have his sentence cut to
China yesterday held a low-key memorial ceremony for the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) not attending, despite a diplomatic crisis between Beijing and Tokyo over Taiwan. Beijing has raged at Tokyo since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last month said that a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan could trigger a military response from Japan. China and Japan have long sparred over their painful history. China consistently reminds its people of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, in which it says Japanese troops killed 300,000 people in what was then its capital. A post-World War II Allied tribunal put the death toll
‘UNWAVERING ALLIANCE’: The US Department of State said that China’s actions during military drills with Russia were not conducive to regional peace and stability The US on Tuesday criticized China over alleged radar deployments against Japanese military aircraft during a training exercise last week, while Tokyo and Seoul yesterday scrambled jets after Chinese and Russian military aircraft conducted joint patrols near the two countries. The incidents came after Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi triggered a dispute with Beijing last month with her remarks on how Tokyo might react to a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan. “China’s actions are not conducive to regional peace and stability,” a US Department of State spokesperson said late on Tuesday, referring to the radar incident. “The US-Japan alliance is stronger and more
FALLEN: The nine soldiers who were killed while carrying out combat and engineering tasks in Russia were given the title of Hero of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea North Korean leader Kim Jong-un attended a welcoming ceremony for an army engineering unit that had returned home after carrying out duties in Russia, North Korean state media KCNA reported on Saturday. In a speech carried by KCNA, Kim praised officers and soldiers of the 528th Regiment of Engineers of the Korean People’s Army (KPA) for “heroic” conduct and “mass heroism” in fulfilling orders issued by the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea during a 120-day overseas deployment. Video footage released by North Korea showed uniformed soldiers disembarking from an aircraft, Kim hugging a soldier seated in a wheelchair, and soldiers and officials
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