CHINA
Italian president visits
Italian President Sergio Mattarella on Friday met with President Xi Jinping (習近平) on an official visit to China that came as Russia’s full-on invasion of Ukraine pitted Rome’s NATO allies against Beijing’s support for Moscow. The two exchanged greetings following a ceremony with full military honors at the Great Hall of the People in the heart of Beijing. In his opening remarks, Xi referred to the 700th anniversary of Italian adventurer and trader Marco Polo’s journey to China that encouraged cultural, economic and religious links between Europe and East Asia. Italy is heavily reliant on foreign trade such as luxury products that have a large market in China. It is also a member of NATO, which China has blamed for provoking the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Beijing has provided Moscow with assistance by purchasing its energy exports while selling it technology that can be used in drones and other armaments. Any differences on political issues were not raised in front of the media and the two leaders later oversaw the signing of a series of agreements on matters from culture to technology and trade. Italy has withdrawn from Xi’s signature global Belt and Road Initiative that seeks to deepen China’s relations with countries in Africa, Asia, Latin American and the Middle East through infrastructure investments. Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni had declined to renew the agreement, but nevertheless visited China in July.
INDONESIA
Dua Lipa concert canceled
Glastonbury headliner Dua Lipa has canceled the Indonesian leg of her Asian tour, citing unsafe staging. The 29-year-old pop star was due to perform in Jakarta yesterday, but pulled out the night before over safety issues at the capital’s 16,500-seat Indonesia Arena. “I’m heartbroken to share that I won’t be able to perform in Jakarta this Saturday,” she wrote in a social media post late on Friday. “I am here in your amazing country and ready to perform, but I am gutted to share that it has been determined that it is not safe for the performance to carry on due to safety issues with the staging.” She had just performed in Singapore, but her tour will now skip past Southeast Asia’s biggest economy and home to about 280 million people, moving on to the Philippines, Japan, Taiwan, Malaysia and Thailand. “I was so looking forward to this night, and it truly pains me that we cannot perform for you all, especially after such a long time since my last performance in Jakarta,” she said. “I love you all and truly can’t wait to be back together in the same room with you singing and dancing our hearts out as soon as possible.”
BRAZIL
Gunmen kill businessman
Police said that unidentified gunmen in a black car on Friday afternoon opened fire at Sao Paulo’s International Airport in Guarulhos, killing one person and injuring three. Police identified the victim who died as Antonio Vinicius Lopes Gritzbach, who had previously received death threats from the First Command of the Capital, a powerful international criminal group. Gritzbach, who had cryptocurrency businesses, had recently entered a plea bargain with local prosecutors to speak about his ties to the criminal organization, police said. Police have not yet determined the number of gunmen involved in the attack. Social media footage shows two people who appear to have been shot at the airport. One victim is seen lying on the ground at Terminal 2, primarily used for domestic flights, while the other is seen stranded on an access road outside the terminal.
With much pomp and circumstance, Cairo is today to inaugurate the long-awaited Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM), widely presented as the crowning jewel on authorities’ efforts to overhaul the country’s vital tourism industry. With a panoramic view of the Giza pyramids plateau, the museum houses thousands of artifacts spanning more than 5,000 years of Egyptian antiquity at a whopping cost of more than US$1 billion. More than two decades in the making, the ultra-modern museum anticipates 5 million visitors annually, with never-before-seen relics on display. In the run-up to the grand opening, Egyptian media and official statements have hailed the “historic moment,” describing the
‘CHILD PORNOGRAPHY’: The doll on Shein’s Web site measure about 80cm in height, and it was holding a teddy bear in a photo published by a daily newspaper France’s anti-fraud unit on Saturday said it had reported Asian e-commerce giant Shein (希音) for selling what it described as “sex dolls with a childlike appearance.” The French Directorate General for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control (DGCCRF) said in a statement that the “description and categorization” of the items on Shein’s Web site “make it difficult to doubt the child pornography nature of the content.” Shortly after the statement, Shein announced that the dolls in question had been withdrawn from its platform and that it had launched an internal inquiry. On its Web site, Le Parisien daily published a
China’s Shenzhou-20 crewed spacecraft has delayed its return mission to Earth after the vessel was possibly hit by tiny bits of space debris, the country’s human spaceflight agency said yesterday, an unusual situation that could disrupt the operation of the country’s space station Tiangong. An impact analysis and risk assessment are underway, the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) said in a statement, without providing a new schedule for the return mission, which was originally set to land in northern China yesterday. The delay highlights the danger to space travel posed by increasing amounts of debris, such as discarded launch vehicles or vessel
RUBBER STAMP? The latest legislative session was the most productive in the number of bills passed, but critics attributed it to a lack of dissenting voices On their last day at work, Hong Kong’s lawmakers — the first batch chosen under Beijing’s mantra of “patriots administering Hong Kong” — posed for group pictures, celebrating a job well done after four years of opposition-free politics. However, despite their smiles, about one-third of the Legislative Council will not seek another term in next month’s election, with the self-described non-establishment figure Tik Chi-yuen (狄志遠) being among those bowing out. “It used to be that [the legislature] had the benefit of free expression... Now it is more uniform. There are multiple voices, but they are not diverse enough,” Tik said, comparing it
RSS