Seven admit rioting, while another six face additional charges carrying a maximum sentence of life in prison
A Hong Kong court has began the trial of 13 people over the storming and ransacking of the city’s legislature in 2019, which was an unprecedented challenge to the Beijing-backed government.
It was the most violent episode in the initial phase of the huge pro-democracy protests that shook Hong Kong that year, with millions marching and staging sit-ins for weeks.
Continue reading...Tokyo says any missile entering its territory will be destroyed as Pyongyang completes preparations to launch first military spy satellite
Japan’s military has said it will destroy any North Korean missile that violates its territory and is making preparations to do so, after Kim Jong-un’s regime told Tokyo it plans to launch a satellite between 31 May and 11 June.
Japan’s chief cabinet secretary, Hirokazu Matsuno, said any launch by North Korea, even if termed a satellite launch, affected the safety of Japanese citizens. “The government recognises that there is a possibility that the satellite may pass through our country’s territory.”
Continue reading...Experts point to crackdown on national security and legal system that encourages guilty pleas
Chinese courts prosecuted 8.3 million people in the five years to 2022, a 12% increase on the previous period. There was also a nearly 20% increase in the number of protests against court rulings.
The figures released by the supreme people’s procuratorate (SPP) in March give a glimpse of how China’s notoriously opaque justice system has operated in recent years, amid a tightening domestic security environment.
Continue reading...Man in his 30s was detained on Friday after opening emergency exit at about 200 metres above ground
A South Korean court has issued an arrest warrant for a passenger who opened an Asiana Airlines plane door minutes before it landed, it has been reported.
The man in his 30s was detained on landing on Friday after opening the door when the Airbus A321-200 was about 200 metres (700ft) above the ground in Daegu, South Korea, causing panic onboard.
Continue reading...Group was among the last opposition parties, as political dissent has been banned since 2020’s security law
The Civic party, one of Hong Kong’s most prominent pro-democracy groups, has voted to disband because of a leadership vacuum, after its members were squeezed out of local councils and charged under Beijing’s national security law.
Nicknamed “the barristers’ party”, it was founded in 2006 by professional elites – mostly from the legal sector – who wanted to promote democratisation and civil society in Hong Kong.
Continue reading...Asiana Airlines flight was about 200 metres above the ground when the passenger pulled emergency exit
A man who opened an emergency exit on a flight mid-air felt “suffocated” and wanted to get off quickly, South Korean police said.
The Asiana Airlines plane was carrying nearly 200 passengers as it approached the runway on Friday at Daegu international airport, about 150 miles south-east of Seoul, on a domestic flight.
Continue reading...Phillip Mehrtens, who has been held hostage since February, makes the claim in a new video released by the separatist group
Rebels in Indonesia’s Papua region have threatened to shoot a New Zealand pilot being held hostage if countries do not comply with their demand to start independence talks within two months, a new video released by the group shows.
Guerrilla fighters in Papua’s central highlands, who want to free Papua from Indonesia, kidnapped Phillip Mehrtens after he landed a commercial plane in the mountainous area of Nduga in February.
Continue reading...Measures come after warning of electricity shortages due to high demand and decreased hydropower production
Cities in Vietnam are cutting the use of public lighting to save energy as unusually hot temperatures threaten to stretch the country’s power supplies.
A sweltering heatwave has gripped swathes of Asia over recent months, causing school closures and deaths in India, as well as health warnings across many countries in the region.
Continue reading...Asiana Airlines officials say man pulled lever to open emergency exit shortly before landing
Police in South Korea have arrested a man who allegedly opened the door on an Asiana Airlines flight shortly before the aircraft landed, triggering panic among the 194 passengers onboard and leaving several requiring hospital treatment for breathing problems.
The Airbus A321 plane landed safely, but with its door still open, at Daegu airport in South Korea at about 12.40pm (0340 BST) after leaving Jeju island an hour earlier, the airport’s flight schedule showed.
Continue reading...Ennosuke Ichikawa taken to hospital but mother and father died after taking overdose
The world of Japanese kabuki, a classical form of Japanese theatre that combines highly stylised movement and unusual vocalisation, has been rocked after the popular actor Ennosuke Ichikawa was taken to hospital and his parents found dead.
Ennosuke was found by his manager collapsed at his home in Tokyo along with an apparent suicide note and taken to hospital.
Continue reading...Wind and rain bring island to a standstill but eye replacement cycle fortuitously weakens it temporarily
Earlier this week, Typhoon Mawar whipped up a storm in western Micronesia as the category 4 storm came close to landfall on the island of Guam. Starting out as a tropical depression over the weekend, Mawar rapidly deepened and intensified over the following couple of days, almost reaching category 5 by Tuesday evening. Wind gusts peaked at 155mph (250km/h), briefly making Mawar a super typhoon about 100 miles south-east of the US island territory.
In a stroke of luck an eyewall replacement cycle occurred overnight, hours before the then super typhoon was due to reach Guam. The cycle involves the slight degradation of the storm’s structure as a new eye develops around the old eye. Consequentially, the storm’s intensity weakened temporarily while simultaneously spreading strong winds over a larger area. Mawar’s winds dropped to a sustained speed of 140mph as the typhoon brushed the northern edge of Guam at about 7am local time (2200 BST) Had Mawar made landfall, it would have been the first category 4 typhoon to do so since Typhoon Pamela in 1976.
Continue reading...Senior White House official says president hears region’s concerns and ‘does not want conflict’ with China
Joe Biden’s senior advisers have acknowledged countries in the Indo-Pacific don’t want to be “trampled by a headlong clash” between the US and China.
In a webinar with an Australian audience on Friday, senior White House national security council (NSC) officials said the US president wanted to give allies and other close partners “breathing space” to engage with China constructively.
Continue reading...US, Japan and South Korea tighten monitoring of North’s missile launches; meanwhile South puts first commercial satellite in space on own rocket
North Korean media has criticised as “sinister measures” plans by South Korea, the United States and Japan to share real-time data on missile launches by Kim Jong-un’s regime – with the North lashing out as its neighbour this week undertook its largest-ever live-fire exercises with the US.
The leaders of South Korea, the US and Japan met at the G7 summit in Hiroshima, Japan, last weekend and discussed new coordination in the face of North Korea’s illicit nuclear and missile threats. North Korea has undertaken a series of missile and weapons tests in recent months, most recently a new solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). The North’s missile and nuclear weapons programmes are banned by the UN security council.
Continue reading...Police say two people were fatally stabbed and two police officers who came to investigate were shot dead
Japanese police have detained a suspect who had been holed up in a building after allegedly killing four people including two police officers in a gun and knife attack, an official said.
The man was taken into custody outside the farm property near the city of Nakano in Nagano region, with police confirming a fourth fatality overnight – an elderly woman who was found injured at the scene and later pronounced dead.
Continue reading...Peter Lam Bui posted his video after a Vietnamese official visited the celebrity chef’s London steakhouse
A Vietnam court has jailed a noodle seller who went viral for impersonating celebrity chef Salt Bae, after the restaurateur served a gold-leaf steak to a powerful official, his lawyer said.
In 2021, Peter Lam Bui posted a parody video impersonating Salt Bae – Nusret Gökçe, a Turkish chef who parlayed his meme stardom into high-end eateries – by sprinkling herbs on noodle soup and calling himself “Green Onion Bae”.
Continue reading...Sam Verzosa says education is in crisis as children study for hours but underperform in tests
A lawmaker in the Philippines has proposed banning schools from setting homework at weekends, saying students are overworked and need to recharge.
Sam Verzosa, a member of the House of Representatives, said the Philippines was in an “educational crisis”, with students spending long hours studying but underperforming in test scores.
Continue reading...Targets include US military facilities on Guam that would be key in an Asia-Pacific conflict, say Microsoft and western spy agencies
A state-sponsored Chinese hacking group has been spying on a wide range of US critical infrastructure organisations and similar activities could be occurring globally, western intelligence agencies and Microsoft have warned.
“The United States and international cybersecurity authorities are issuing this joint Cybersecurity Advisory (CSA) to highlight a recently discovered cluster of activity of interest associated with a People’s Republic of China (PRC) state-sponsored cyber actor, also known as Volt Typhoon,” said a statement released by authorities in the US, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the UK – countries that make up the Five Eyes intelligence network.
Continue reading...Citations of Chinese research have risen because of sequencing of Covid-19 genome
China has overtaken the US to become the biggest contributor to nature-science journals, in a sign of the country’s growing influence in the world of academic research.
The Nature Index, which tracks data on author affiliations in 82 high quality journals, found that authors affiliated with Chinese institutions are more prolific than their US counterparts in physical sciences, chemistry, Earth and environmental sciences. The only category in which the US is still in the lead is life sciences.
Continue reading...Russian PM holds talks with Xi Jinping and signs bilateral pacts to further investment, exports and sports cooperation
Russia and China have agreed to deepen investment in trade services, promote agricultural exports and boost sports cooperation, as Mikhail Mishustin, Russia’s prime minister, signed a set of bilateral agreements on a visit to Beijing.
Mishustin is the highest-ranking Russian official to visit Beijing since the start of the war in Ukraine. In March, China’s leader, Xi Jinping, visited Vladimir Putin in Moscow in a show of support for his “dear friend”.
Continue reading...Jensen Huang says Chinese firms will ‘just build it themselves’ if they cannot buy from US
The US risks causing “enormous damage” to its tech industry if it continues restrictions on trade with China, according to the chief executive of the chipmaker Nvidia.
Jensen Huang said curbs introduced by the Biden administration, which include restricting the export to China of advanced chips made with US technology, had left the business with “our hands tied behind our back”.
In an interview with the Financial Times, Huang said: “If [China] can’t buy from … the United States, they’ll just build it themselves. So the US has to be careful. China is a very important market for the technology industry.”