CHINA
Pakistan upgrade pledged
Beijing is willing to work with Islamabad to build an upgraded version of an economic corridor linking the two countries, President Xi Jinping (習近平) told visiting Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Friday. Sharif pledged to ensure the safety of Chinese workers in Pakistan, according to a report on by state broadcaster China Central Television. Sharif offered his government’s condolences for the deaths in March of five Chinese engineers in a suicide bombing in Pakistan, the report said. The economic corridor includes building and improving roads and rail systems to link the western Xinjiang region to Pakistan’s Gwadar Port on the Arabian sea. Earlier in the day, Xi met with Brazilian Vice President Geraldo Alckmin, who expressed hope that many Chinese companies would participate in a Brazilian government infrastructure program that includes railways, energy, port and airport projects.
VIETNAM
Island building picks up
Hanoi has been increasing its dredging and landfill work in the South China Sea, creating almost as much new land as in the previous two years combined, setting the stage for a record year of island-building, US researchers said on Friday. Since November last year, when the Washington-based think tank issued its last report, Vietnam has created 280 hectares of land, compared with 163.5 hectares in the first 11 months of last year and 140 hectares in 2022, the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative said in a report.
DR CONGO
Coup suspects face death
Three US suspects in what the Congolese army called an attempted coup in Kinshasa last month committed acts “punishable by death,” a court heard on Friday as their trial opened. Marcel Malanga and Taylor Christian Thomson, both 21, and 36-year-old Benjamin Reuben Zalman-Polun are among 50 defendants in the case and were the first to stand before the judge to hear the charges against them. “These acts are punishable by death,” the presiding judge of the Kinshasa-Gombe military court, Freddy Ehume, told the three in Kinshasa. Western diplomats, journalists and lawyers were present for the trial, which is set to resume on Friday.
UNITED KINGDOM
Cameron talks to hoaxer
Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs David Cameron exchanged messages and held a video call with someone purporting to be former Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko, but the interactions were later determined to be a hoax, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office said on Friday. “Whilst the video call clearly appeared to be with Mr Poroshenko, following the conversation the Foreign Secretary became suspicious,” the foreign office said in a statement. “The department has now investigated and confirmed that it was not genuine and that the messages and video call were a hoax.” The statement gave no details of what was discussed during the exchanges, other than to say that the caller asked Cameron for others’ contact details. “Whilst regretting his mistake, the Foreign Secretary thinks it important to call out this behavior and increase efforts to counter the use of misinformation,” the foreign office said. It did not say who it believed was responsible for the hoax.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
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