PHILIPPINES
Parties banned on Boracay
There are to be no late-night beach parties or water sports when Boracay Island reopens to tourists today after a six-month shutdown. “Our guests can expect a better Boracay when it comes to maintaining a high environmental standard,” Secretary of Tourism Berna Romulo-Puyat said yesterday via Facebook messenger, adding that visitors should “manage your expectations.” Drinking and smoking in public places have also been banned. Jet skis and other water sports would be banned until further notice, and sand castle making would be regulated, according to a Twitter advisory by Cebu Air. Confirmed bookings with accredited hotels will be required before being allowed entry to the island, officials said. The number of visitors will be capped at 6,405 arrivals per day, while only 19,000 tourists will be allowed on the island at any given time, Secretary of Environment and Natural Resources Roy Cimatu said.
SINGAPORE
Workers’ Party asks for help
Leaders of the only parliamentary opposition party have appealed to supporters for financial help, saying they face the risk of bankruptcy as costs mount in civil cases they are fighting. Workers’ Party head Pritam Singh, former leader Low Thia Khiang and chair Sylvia Lim are being sued by two town councils controlled by the party between 2011 and 2015 for more than S$30 million (US$21.7 million) in damages. The councils say the trio failed in their fiduciary duties — claims the defendants say are unfounded. The three can lose their parliamentary seats if declared bankrupt, which would cut the Workers’ Party’s seats to six in the 100-seat assembly dominated by the People’s Action Party.
NORTH KOREA
US urged to lift sanctions
A foreign ministry official yesterday urged the US to immediately lift sanctions against his nation, warning that the US’ “confidence-destroying measures” would undermine denuclearization talks. “We think that sanctions and pressure do more harm than good,” Song Il-hyok, deputy director-general of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Institute for Disarmament and Peace, said at a defense forum in Beijing.
SOUTH KOREA
Disarmament under way
Guards on the two sides of the Joint Security Area (JSA) in the border village of Panmunjom are to begin disarming today, Ministry of National Defense spokeswoman Choi Hyun-soo said yesterday. The two Koreas and the UN Command are to conduct joint verification until tomorrow. Once demilitarized, the JSA will be guarded by 35 unarmed troops from each side and “freedom of movement” will be allowed for visitors and tourists, according to a pact signed last month.
PAKISTAN
Envoys voice concern
Western nations and Japan have expressed “serious concerns” to Prime Minister Imran Khan about a crackdown on aid groups, diplomats in Islamabad said yesterday. At least 18 international aid agencies were ordered to leave the country in the past few months after being refused registration. The countries have written a letter to Khan saying the groups did not get a proper explanation for why they had been ordered out and they criticized a “lack of transparency” in the registration process. The letter was signed by the EU ambassador and envoys from the US, Canada, Australia, Norway, Switzerland and Japan.
BRAZIL
Hopeful’s accuser threatened
The nation’s biggest newspaper on Wednesday said that it has asked federal police to investigate threats against a reporter who has said that backers of the presidential frontrunner bankrolled a fake news campaign. The request comes amid an increasingly heated atmosphere ahead of a runoff election on Sunday between Social Liberal Party presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro, who leads in opinion polls, and his leftist opponent Workers’ Party candidate Fernando Haddad. Newspaper Folha de S Paulo last week ran a report by Patricia Campos Mello saying that businessmen linked to Bolsonaro had paid to spread fake news on WhatsApp to benefit his candidacy. It said that a blast message campaign was also planned for this week.
CHILE
Court advises settling abuse
Santiago Archbishop Ricardo Ezzati Andrello and three men who claim that they were sexually abused by Chilean priest Fernando Karadima must appear at a mediation hearing called by the Court of Appeal. In a statement posted on its Web site on Wednesday, the court instructed the two parties to meet with the possibility of an agreement between them. The hearing has been set for Nov. 20. Claimants James Hamilton, Jose Andres Murillo and Juan Carlos Cruz filed an appeal for “moral damages” against the Catholic Church earlier this year, accusing it of covering up abuse crimes. The case was rejected by a lower court for lack of evidence.
CUBA
Minister slams US stance
Minister of Foreign Affairs Bruno Rodriguez on Wednesday said that the US was on a path of confrontation amid signs that Washington could further tighten decades-old sanctions on the island. “We regret the US government is advancing on a course of confrontation with Cuba,” Rodriguez told a one-and-a-half-hour news conference in Havana. He also accused the US of pressuring countries to reject a resolution that Cuba is to present at the UN General Assembly next week for the 27th year, calling for an end to the US’ economic embargo on the country. Washington is trying to use human rights as a pretext to justify the embargo, which itself “violates the human rights of the Cuban people,” Rodriguez said.
UNITED STATES
Nationalist leaders charged
The leader of a California-based white nationalist group and three others have been charged with attacking demonstrators and conspiring to incite riots at political rallies across the state, federal prosecutors said on Wednesday. Robert Rundo, the 28-year-old founder of the Rise Above Movement, was on Sunday taken into custody at Los Angeles International Airport. Two other members of the group, Robert Boman, 25, and Tyler Laube, 22, were arrested on Wednesday morning, US Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles spokesman Thom Mrozek said.
FRANCE
Dad of underfed boys jailed
The father of two boys, aged three and four, was on Wednesday jailed in Limoges for three months for feeding them nearly exclusively on Coca-Cola, the children’s lawyer said. The father, who can “neither read, nor write, nor count, doesn’t realize the seriousness of the situation and spent all his welfare money on alcohol,” Carole Papon, a representative of the association French Victims 87, said on Wednesday. Within a few days of welfare payments being made “the family had nothing to eat. They only had Coca-Cola to drink,” she said.
Thousands gathered across New Zealand yesterday to celebrate the signing of the country’s founding document and some called for an end to government policies that critics say erode the rights promised to the indigenous Maori population. As the sun rose on the dawn service at Waitangi where the Treaty of Waitangi was first signed between the British Crown and Maori chiefs in 1840, some community leaders called on the government to honor promises made 185 years ago. The call was repeated at peaceful rallies that drew several hundred people later in the day. “This government is attacking tangata whenua [indigenous people] on all
RIGHTS FEARS: A protester said Beijing would use the embassy to catch and send Hong Kongers to China, while a lawmaker said Chinese agents had threatened Britons Hundreds of demonstrators on Saturday protested at a site earmarked for Beijing’s controversial new embassy in London over human rights and security concerns. The new embassy — if approved by the British government — would be the “biggest Chinese embassy in Europe,” one lawmaker said earlier. Protester Iona Boswell, a 40-year-old social worker, said there was “no need for a mega embassy here” and that she believed it would be used to facilitate the “harassment of dissidents.” China has for several years been trying to relocate its embassy, currently in the British capital’s upmarket Marylebone district, to the sprawling historic site in the
The administration of US President Donald Trump has appointed to serve as the top public diplomacy official a former speech writer for Trump with a history of doubts over US foreign policy toward Taiwan and inflammatory comments on women and minorities, at one point saying that "competent white men must be in charge." Darren Beattie has been named the acting undersecretary for public diplomacy and public affairs, a senior US Department of State official said, a role that determines the tone of the US' public messaging in the world. Beattie requires US Senate confirmation to serve on a permanent basis. "Thanks to
‘IMPOSSIBLE’: The authors of the study, which was published in an environment journal, said that the findings appeared grim, but that honesty is necessary for change Holding long-term global warming to 2°C — the fallback target of the Paris climate accord — is now “impossible,” according to a new analysis published by leading scientists. Led by renowned climatologist James Hansen, the paper appears in the journal Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development and concludes that Earth’s climate is more sensitive to rising greenhouse gas emissions than previously thought. Compounding the crisis, Hansen and colleagues argued, is a recent decline in sunlight-blocking aerosol pollution from the shipping industry, which had been mitigating some of the warming. An ambitious climate change scenario outlined by the UN’s climate