CHINA
Expelled ‘WSJ’ pair leave
Two Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reporters yesterday left the country after being expelled over a controversial headline in an opinion piece. Beijing deputy bureau chief Josh Chin (李肇華) and reporters Deng Chao (鄧超) and Philip Wen (溫友正) last week had their press credentials revoked. Chin and Wen were seen checking in for a flight at Beijing Capital International Airport and going through security. Deng has been reporting from Wuhan and the WSJ said she was still in the quarantined city.
THAILAND
Banned party warned
The government yesterday threatened to take legal action against a banned opposition party that has claimed Prime Minister Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha aided in the cover-up of Malaysia’s 1MDB graft scandal by harboring a fugitive financier. A spokeswoman for the anti-military Future Forward Party, which was dissolved by a court on Friday by a court, on Sunday told a news conference that Prayut had allowed fugitive financier Low Taek Jho (劉特佐) and his associates to pass through the kingdom. “This accusation ... confuses the public,” government spokeswoman Narumon Pinyosinwat said on Twitter yesterday. “Concerned ministries are considering legal action.”
GERMANY
Shooting victims mourned
About 10,000 protesters on Sunday marched through the central town of Hanau to mourn the nine people who were killed by an immigrant-hating gunman on Wednesday. “These days and hours are the blackest and darkest our town has ever experienced during peace times,” Hanau Mayor Claus Kaminsky told the crowd, adding that those who want to pull apart society would not succeed, “because we are more and we will prevent that.” A memorial for the victims is planned for later this week.
GERMANY
CDU planning congress
Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) is to hold an extraordinary party congress either on April 25 or May 9 to elect a new leader, broadcaster n-tv reported yesterday citing party sources. Senior party members met yesterday to decide on a leadership accession plan, following CDU leader Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer’s announcement earlier this month that she would no longer seek to succeed Merkel. The CDU was hammered again on Sunday when it posted its worst poll result in Hamburg since World War II, while the Greens almost doubled their support. The Social Democrats secured a clear victory in Sunday’s voting with 39 percent, while the Greens won 25.5 percent and the CDU won just over 11.
UNITED STATES
Seven hurt in Texas shooting
A gunman opened fire at a flea market in Houston, Texas, on Sunday evening, wounding seven people in an area known for its Hispanic community. A male suspect was taken into custody at the scene. “We believe at this point those are all minor, superficial type of wounds,” Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez said.
UNITED STATES
Rocketmaker dies
A California man who said he wanted to fly to the edge of outer space to see if the world was really round has died after his home-built rocket blasted off into the desert sky and plunged back to earth. “Mad” Mike Hughes, 64, was killed on Saturday afternoon after his rocket crashed on private property near Barstow, California.
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
STOPOVERS: As organized crime groups in Asia and the Americas move drugs via places such as Tonga, methamphetamine use has reached levels called ‘epidemic’ A surge of drugs is engulfing the South Pacific as cartels and triads use far-flung island nations to channel narcotics across the globe, top police and UN officials told reporters. Pacific island nations such as Fiji and Tonga sit at the crossroads of largely unpatrolled ocean trafficking routes used to shift cocaine from Latin America, and methamphetamine and opioids from Asia. This illicit cargo is increasingly spilling over into local hands, feeding drug addiction in communities where serious crime had been rare. “We’re a victim of our geographical location. An ideal transit point for vessels crossing the Pacific,” Tonga Police Commissioner Shane McLennan
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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