HONG KONG
Election delay approved
The Standing Committee of China’s National People’s Congress yesterday affirmed the unprecedented decision by Chief Executive Carrie Lam’s (林鄭月娥) government’s to delay Legislative Council elections for a year, broadcaster TVBS reported. The terms of the elected lawmakers would be extended for a year, the online news portal HK01 said. The committee did not explicitly say whether lawmakers would need to retake their oaths and would let Lam’s government decide if disqualified lawmakers’ terms can be extended, Now TV reported, without saying where it got the information.
NEW ZEALAND
New COVID-19 cases found
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern yesterday announced the nation’s first locally transmitted COVID-19 infections in 102 days, and issued a stay-at-home lockdown order for Auckland. Ardern said four cases had been detected in a single family from an unknown source. “After 102 days, we have our first cases of COVID-19 outside of managed isolation or quarantine facilities... While we have all worked incredibly hard to prevent this scenario, we have also planned and prepared for it,” she said. From noon today, Auckland will move to level 3 on the nation’s COVID alert system, meaning people should stay at home if possible and avoid contact with others. This is to remain in place for three days, and the rest of the country is to go to level 2 restrictions that include social distancing and limits on the size of gatherings.
SINGAPORE
Critic to pay court fine
Li Shengwu (李繩武), the grandson of former prime minister Lee Kuan Yew (李光耀) and nephew of the current prime minister, yesterday said that he would pay a fine for a Facebook post that questioned the independence of the city-state’s judiciary. Li, an academic based at Harvard University, was last month ordered to pay a S$15,000 (US$11,000) fine or serve a week’s jail by the High Court over the 2017 post in which he described the government as “very litigious and has a pliant court system.” He said he would pay “in order to buy some peace and quiet” and to avoid giving the government an excuse to attack him and his family, but added that he did not admit guilt. “The government claims that my friends-only Facebook post ‘scandalized the judiciary’. The true scandal is the misuse of state resources to repress private speech,” he wrote yesterday.
THE NETHERLANDS
Huge cocaine lab busted
Police have busted what they said yesterday was the largest ever cocaine laboratory ever found in the nation, built in a converted horse riding school in the northern city of Apeldoorn. Police raided the stables on Friday, arresting at least 17 suspects, the majority of them Colombians. Three Dutch and one Turkish suspects were also arrested. “Given the number of people who worked there, the installation, the size, the layout and the equipment, we estimate the production capacity at 150 to 200kg of cocaine per day,” police chief Andre van Rijn said in a statement. Police also confiscated 100kg of cocaine base.
NIGERIA
Singer sentenced to death
An Islamic court in Kano on Monday sentenced 22-year-old singer Yahaya Aminu Sharif to be hanged for blasphemy against the Prophet Mohammed in one of his songs, judicial officials said. The song, shared on social media in March, triggered riots in the Kano. He can appeal the verdict.
Indonesia and Malaysia have become the first countries to block Grok, the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot developed by Elon Musk’s xAI, after authorities said it was being misused to generate sexually explicit and nonconsensual images. The moves reflect growing global concern over generative AI tools that can produce realistic images, sound and text, while existing safeguards fail to prevent their abuse. The Grok chatbot, which is accessed through Musk’s social media platform X, has been criticized for generating manipulated images, including depictions of women in bikinis or sexually explicit poses, as well as images involving children. Regulators in the two Southeast Asian
COMMUNIST ALIGNMENT: To Lam wants to combine party chief and state presidency roles, with the decision resting on the election of 200 new party delegates next week Communist Party of Vietnam General Secretary To Lam is seeking to combine his party role with the state presidency, officials said, in a move that would align Vietnam’s political structure more closely to China’s, where President Xi Jinping (習近平) heads the party and state. Next week about 1,600 delegates are to gather in Hanoi to commence a week-long communist party congress, held every five years to select new leaders and set policy goals for the single-party state. Lam, 68, bade for both top positions at a party meeting last month, seeking initial party approval ahead of the congress, three people briefed by
The Chinese Embassy in Manila yesterday said it has filed a diplomatic protest against a Philippine Coast Guard spokesman over a social media post that included cartoonish images of Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平). Philippine Coast Guard spokesman Jay Tarriela and an embassy official had been trading barbs since last week over issues concerning the disputed South China Sea. The crucial waterway, which Beijing claims historic rights to despite an international ruling that its assertion has no legal basis, has been the site of repeated clashes between Chinese and Philippine vessels. Tarriela’s Facebook post on Wednesday included a photo of him giving a
ICE DISPUTE: The Trump administration has sought to paint Good as a ‘domestic terrorist,’ insisting that the agent who fatally shot her was acting in self-defense Thousands of demonstrators chanting the name of the woman killed by a US federal agent in Minneapolis, Minnesota, took to the city’s streets on Saturday, amid widespread anger at use of force in the immigration crackdown of US President Donald Trump. Organizers said more than 1,000 events were planned across the US under the slogan “ICE, Out for Good” — referring to the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which is drawing growing opposition over its execution of Trump’s effort at mass deportations. The slogan is also a reference to Renee Good, the 37-year-old mother shot dead on Wednesday in her
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