HONG KONG
Officials heading to Beijing
The government will hold a joint conference tomorrow with other officials in Beijing to discuss the territory’s involvement in China’s Belt and Road Initiative. The conference will detail its “full participation in and contribution to the Belt and Road Initiative, the work priorities and initiatives to be implemented for the year,” the government said in an announcement yesterday. Secretary for Justice Teresa Cheng (鄭若驊), Secretary for Commerce and Economic Development Edward Yau (邱騰華) and Secretary for Constitutional and Mainland Affairs Patrick Nip (聶德權) are to lead the group heading to Beijing. The Chinese National Development and Reform Commission, Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office and other authorities will also participate, it said.
INDIA
Arrests made after lynching
Police have arrested 15 men after the latest in a spate of lynchings incited by rumors spread on WhatsApp of strangers abducting children, an officer said yesterday. A mob in a mainly tribal area of Assam pulled two men out of their car on Friday night and beat them to death before police could arrive. A video on YouTube shows the badly bruised and bleeding men pleading for their lives. The two friends, residents of Guwahati, were returning from a picnic. “We have arrested 15 persons. We have also zeroed in on a couple of people who recorded and uploaded the video,” police official Mukesh Agrawal said. “The villagers got suspicious of the strangers as for the last three or four days messages were going around on WhatsApp... about child lifters roaming the area.”
GERMANY
Murder suspect repatriated
An Iraqi former asylum seeker was returned from Iraq on Saturday after admitting raping and murdering a teenage girl in Wiesbaden, Iraqi Kurdish officials and local media said. Ali Bashar, 20, is alleged to have strangled 14-year-old Susanna Maria Feldman after raping her. He was on Friday detained in northern Iraq after German police said he had fled there with his family. Despite the absence of a formal extradition treaty, he was put on a Lufthansa flight to Frankfurt from the Kurdish regional capital, Erbil, media reports said. He was transferred by helicopter to Wiesbaden after arriving in Frankfurt. “I am delighted the suspect sought by justice is back in Germany,” Minister of the Interior Horst Seehofer in a statement, adding he hoped Bashar would now “rapidly” face trial.
IRAQ
Market bomb kills two
At least two people were killed and 20 were wounded after a bomb went off on Saturday at a market in the town of Khalis in Diyala Province, security sources said. Diyala is a mixed province where both Sunni Arabs and Shiite Arabs live. No one has yet claimed responsibility for the bombing.
EGYPT
US deportee dies at airport
An Eritrean national who was denied asylum in the US and was being sent back to his homeland has died in an apparent suicide in a holding area at Cairo International Airport, airport officials said on Saturday. Zeresenay Ermias Testfatsion, 34, was on Wednesday found dead in a shower area and his remains were taken to a hospital, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) said. Airport officials said he was found hanging. His remains will be transported to Eritrea, ICE said in a statement.
AFGHAN CHILD: A court battle is ongoing over if the toddler can stay with Joshua Mast and his wife, who wanted ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ for her Major Joshua Mast, a US Marine whose adoption of an Afghan war orphan has spurred a years-long legal battle, is to remain on active duty after a three-member panel of Marines on Tuesday found that while he acted in a way unbecoming of an officer to bring home the baby girl, it did not warrant his separation from the military. Lawyers for the Marine Corps argued that Mast abused his position, disregarded orders of his superiors, mishandled classified information and improperly used a government computer in his fight over the child who was found orphaned on the battlefield in rural Afghanistan
EYEING THE US ELECTION: Analysts say that Pyongyang would likely leverage its enlarged nuclear arsenal for concessions after a new US administration is inaugurated North Korean leader Kim Jong-un warned again that he could use nuclear weapons in potential conflicts with South Korea and the US, as he accused them of provoking North Korea and raising animosities on the Korean Peninsula, state media reported yesterday. Kim has issued threats to use nuclear weapons pre-emptively numerous times, but his latest warning came as experts said that North Korea could ramp up hostilities ahead of next month’s US presidential election. In a Monday speech at a university named after him, the Kim Jong-un National Defense University, he said that North Korea “will without hesitation use all its attack
US Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris is in “excellent health” and fit for the presidency, according to a medical report published by the White House on Saturday as she challenged her rival, former US president Donald Trump, to publish his own health records. “Vice President Harris remains in excellent health,” her physician Joshua Simmons said in the report, adding that she “possesses the physical and mental resiliency required to successfully execute the duties of the presidency.” Speaking to reporters ahead of a trip to North Carolina, Harris called Trump’s unwillingness to publish his records “a further example
RUSSIAN INPUT: Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov called Washington’s actions in Asia ‘destructive,’ accusing it of being the reason for the ‘militarization’ of Japan The US is concerned about China’s “increasingly dangerous and unlawful” activities in the disputed South China Sea, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told ASEAN leaders yesterday during an annual summit, and pledged that Washington would continue to uphold freedom of navigation in the region. The 10-member ASEAN meeting with Blinken followed a series of confrontations at sea between China and ASEAN members Philippines and Vietnam. “We are very concerned about China’s increasingly dangerous and unlawful activities in the South China Sea which have injured people, harm vessels from ASEAN nations and contradict commitments to peaceful resolutions of disputes,” said Blinken, who
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