PHILIPPINES
Manila hotel fire kills four
A fire yesterday broke out at a hotel in Manila, killing four people and trapping several on the fifth floor, a rescue official said. About 20 people were trapped in the Manila Pavilion Hotel, Manila Disaster Risk Reduction Management Office officer-in-charge Johnny Yu told radio station dZMM. “We have reports coming in from the Bureau of Fire Protection that they saw from the fifth floor 19 to 20 trapped victims, but they are alive,” Yu said. It was not immediately clear how the fire started.
SRI LANKA
State of emergency lifted
President Maithripala Sirisena yesterday announced that he has lifted a nationwide state of emergency imposed 12 days ago to quell anti-Muslim riots in which three people died and hundreds of shops were destroyed. Sirisena said improvements in the security situation prompted him to end the emergency, under which security forces and the police had sweeping powers to detain suspects. “Upon assessing the public safety situation, I instructed to revoke the state of emergency from midnight yesterday,” Sirisena said on Twitter as he returned to the country after a tour of Japan.
CHINA
NPC renews Li’s tenure
The National People’s Congress (NPC) yesterday endorsed Premier Li Keqiang,(李克強) the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) No. 2 leader, for a second five-year term and approved the appointment of a director for a new anti-corruption agency with sweeping powers. Congress delegates voted 2,964 to 2 to approve Li’s appointment. That comes a day after CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping (習近平) was reappointed the country’s president with no limits on how many terms he can serve.
AUSTRALIA
Suu Kyi’s immunity affirmed
Burmese State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi has immunity from prosecution, Australia’s attorney-general said yesterday after a legal bid was launched to hold her responsible for “crimes against humanity.” A group of five Australian lawyers filed a private application at the Melbourne Magistrates Court seeking to prosecute her over the treatment of the Rohingya Muslim minority, coinciding with Aung San Suu Kyi attending the ASEAN summit in Sydney. Australian Attorney-General Christian Porter said that Aung San Suu Kyi cannot be prosecuted in Australia, nor arrested or detained. “Aung San Suu Kyi has complete immunity,” he said in a statement. “This includes from being served with court documents, because under customary international law, heads of state, heads of government and ministers of foreign affairs are immune from foreign criminal proceedings and are inviolable.”
SOUTH AFRICA
Zuma might fight indictment
Former South African president Jacob Zuma might challenge National Director of Public Prosecutions Shaun Abrahams’ decision to reinstate corruption charges over an arms deal, news broadcaster eNCA said on Saturday. Abrahams on Friday told a news conference that Zuma’s attempts to head off the charges hanging over him for more than a decade had failed. He said the 75-year-old Zuma denies all allegations against him. Zuma’s lawyer Michael Hulley said the reason behind Abrahams’ decision was not clear from the “one-page and somewhat terse response” received from him “advising that the representations made on behalf of Zuma were unsuccessful,” eNCA said on its news Web site.
James Watson — the Nobel laureate co-credited with the pivotal discovery of DNA’s double-helix structure, but whose career was later tainted by his repeated racist remarks — has died, his former lab said on Friday. He was 97. The eminent biologist died on Thursday in hospice care on Long Island in New York, announced the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where he was based for much of his career. Watson became among the 20th century’s most storied scientists for his 1953 breakthrough discovery of the double helix with researcher partner Francis Crick. Along with Crick and Maurice Wilkins, he shared the
OUTRAGE: The former strongman was accused of corruption and responsibility for the killings of hundreds of thousands of political opponents during his time in office Indonesia yesterday awarded the title of national hero to late president Suharto, provoking outrage from rights groups who said the move was an attempt to whitewash decades of human rights abuses and corruption that took place during his 32 years in power. Suharto was a US ally during the Cold War who presided over decades of authoritarian rule, during which up to 1 million political opponents were killed, until he was toppled by protests in 1998. He was one of 10 people recognized by Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto in a televised ceremony held at the presidential palace in Jakarta to mark National
US President Donald Trump handed Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban a one-year exemption from sanctions for buying Russian oil and gas after the close right-wing allies held a chummy White House meeting on Friday. Trump slapped sanctions on Moscow’s two largest oil companies last month after losing patience with Russian President Vladimir Putin over his refusal to end the nearly four-year-old invasion of Ukraine. However, while Trump has pushed other European countries to stop buying oil that he says funds Moscow’s war machine, Orban used his first trip to the White House since Trump’s return to power to push for
LANDMARK: After first meeting Trump in Riyadh in May, al-Sharaa’s visit to the White House today would be the first by a Syrian leader since the country’s independence Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa arrived in the US on Saturday for a landmark official visit, his country’s state news agency SANA reported, a day after Washington removed him from a terrorism blacklist. Sharaa, whose rebel forces ousted long-time former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad late last year, is due to meet US President Donald Trump at the White House today. It is the first such visit by a Syrian president since the country’s independence in 1946, according to analysts. The interim leader met Trump for the first time in Riyadh during the US president’s regional tour in May. US envoy to Syria Tom Barrack earlier
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