Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Qin Gang (秦剛) will skip an international gathering of top diplomats this week due to his “physical condition,” the Beijing government said, making a rare disclosure about the health of an official.
China’s top diplomat, Wang Yi (王毅), will instead attend the annual ASEAN gathering of foreign ministers in Indonesia.
The decision was announced by Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Wang Wenbin (汪文斌) at a regular press briefing in Beijing yesterday. He declined to elaborate on the nature of Qin’s physical condition.
Photo: AP
The meetings, which began yesterday in Jakarta, would have put Qin and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in the same room for the first time since they met in Beijing last month.
Qin has not been seen in public for 16 days, an absence which had drawn scrutiny in recent days. His last official engagement was on June 25, when he met officials from Sri Lanka, Russia and Vietnam, the Chinese foreign ministry’s Web site said.
Qin had been expected to meet EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell earlier this month, but China abruptly postponed the trip without giving details.
Politico previously reported there was speculation in Brussels the foreign minister had health issues, prompting the delay.
Crowds in Bangladesh are flocking to snap photographs with an unlikely social media star — an albino buffalo with flowing blond hair nicknamed “Donald Trump” that is due to be sacrificed within days. Owner Zia Uddin Mridha, 38, said his brother named the 700kg bull over its flowing helmet of hair resembling the signature look of the US president. “My younger brother picked this name because of the buffalo’s extraordinary hair,” he said at his farm in Narayanganj, just outside the capital, Dhaka. Mridha said that a constant stream of curious visitors — social media fans, onlookers and children — have come throughout
It began as a satirical online project. Now millions of young people in India are flocking to it as an outlet for their frustration. A parody political party called the Cockroach Janta Party, with the insect as its symbol, has exploded across India’s social media by turning absurdist humor into protest. Memes and short videos mocking corruption, joblessness and political dysfunction have flooded social media sites, where millions of users are embracing the cockroach — known for its ability to survive harsh conditions — as a tongue-in-cheek symbol of endurance. The online movement’s rise has been unusually rapid. The Cockroach Janta Party (CJP)
BIGGER ROLE: Beijing has said it maintains an impartial stance on the war in Ukraine, but by training Russian troops, China is far more involved than previously known China’s armed forces secretly trained about 200 Russian military personnel in China late last year, and some have since returned to fight in Ukraine, according to three European intelligence agencies and documents seen by Reuters. While China and Russia have held a number of joint military exercises since Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Beijing has repeatedly said that it is neutral in the conflict and presents itself as a peace mediator. The covert training sessions, which predominantly focused on the use of drones, were outlined in a dual-language Russian-Chinese agreement signed by senior Russian and Chinese officers in Beijing on
HOTTER: While Indians are accustomed to summer heat, climate change has caused northwestern India to warm faster than other parts of the country, an academic said Roads and markets have emptied during afternoons and some farmers have switched to nighttime work to avoid scorching temperatures as a heat wave grips large parts of India. The India Meteorological Department forecast maximum temperatures for yesterday of about 45°C in the capital, New Delhi, where authorities have opened temporary “cooling zones” to help people cope. The weather department warned that conditions would likely persist across several northern regions in the coming days, with temperatures staying well above seasonal averages. Authorities urged people to stay indoors during the hottest hours and take precautions against heat-related illnesses. India declares a heat wave whenever maximum temperatures
RSS