Category Archives: Asia Pacific

China spends billions on pro-Russia disinformation, US special envoy says

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Beijing propaganda includes messaging aligned with Moscow on Ukraine war, says James Rubin

The west has been slow to respond to China spending billions globally to spread poisonous disinformation, including messaging that is completely aligned with Russia on Ukraine, a US special envoy has claimed.

James Rubin, a coordinator for the Global Engagement Center, a US state department body set up to “expose and counter” foreign propaganda and disinformation, made the remarks during a European tour this week.

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Canada bans TikTok on government devices over security risks

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EU and parts of US already block access to Chinese-owned app amid concerns over data privacy and security

Canada has joined the US and EU in enacting a sweeping ban preventing TikTok from being installed on all government-issued mobile devices, as western officials take action over the Chinese-owned video-sharing app.

Justin Trudeau, the Canadian prime minister, did not rule out further action. “I suspect that as government takes the significant step of telling all federal employees that they can no longer use TikTok on their work phones, many Canadians from business to private individuals will reflect on the security of their own data and perhaps make choices,” he said.

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China should scrap ‘picking quarrels’ crime, says leading lawyer

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Suggestion to abolish catch-all offence will be among thousands considered at Chinese Communist party summit

China should abolish the catch-all crime of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble”, a political delegate has proposed before next week’s major Two Sessions legislative meeting.

Zhu Zhengfu, a member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) advisory body, said the law risked undermining China’s legal system and was open to “selective enforcement” by authorities, according to state media.

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Confusion surrounds China’s energy policies as GDP and climate goals clash

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Wave of permits for coal-fired power plants sparks concern as ambitions for GDP growth and lowering emissions come into conflict

China’s energy policies are fast creating a type of “emissions ambiguity”, as the twin goals of boosting GDP growth and reducing carbon emissions come into conflict.

The uncertainty is whether and when the world’s biggest carbon emitter will start to curb greenhouse gas pollution. The release of the country’s annual statistics communique on Tuesday did not clear things up.

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Japan’s top ad agency indicted over Olympics bid-rigging scandal

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Dentsu Group charged after arrest of Tokyo 2020 committee official accused of rigging Games-related tenders

Japan’s biggest advertising agency and five other companies have been indicted for allegedly violating an anti-monopoly law, in a corruption scandal over allegations of bid-rigging during the Tokyo Olympics.

The indictment followed the arrest this month of a senior Tokyo 2020 organising committee official and three others who were accused of rigging a string of Olympic Games-related tenders.

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North Korea’s Kim Jong-un sounds alarm on agriculture amid reports of food shortages

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Leader says agriculture needs ‘fundamental transformation’ and makes hitting grain targets a priority as country isolated by sanctions struggles

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has urged government officials to engineer a “fundamental transformation” in agricultural production, state media reported, amid fears that the country’s food shortage is worsening.

Kim said hitting grain production targets this year was a priority and emphasised the importance of stable agriculture production during the second day of a key meeting of the Workers’ party, the state news agency KCNA said on Tuesday.

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Ex-husband and relatives charged with murder of Hong Kong model as more body parts found

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Remains taken for forensic testing to determine if they belong to influencer Abby Choi

The ex-husband and two former in-laws of a woman in Hong Kong have been charged with her murder, after police revealed they had found more body parts during a weekend search.

Abby Choi’s ex-husband, Alex Kwong Kong-chi, his father and his brother were formally charged with murder on Sunday. Kwong’s mother was charged with perverting the course of justice.

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China approves biggest expansion in new coal power plants since 2015, report finds

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Concerns about energy shortages drive increase as projects progress at ‘extraordinary’ speed

China approved the construction of another 106 gigawatts of coal-fired power capacity last year, four times higher than a year earlier and the highest since 2015, research shows.

Over the year, 50GW of coal power capacity went into construction across the country – up by more than half compared with the previous year – driven by energy security considerations, the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) and Global Energy Monitor (GEM) said on Monday.

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Papua New Guinea hostage taking a ‘spur of the moment decision’

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Gang who captured Prof Bryce Barker and his research team wanted compensation after two members shot at logging site

The decision to take the Australian-based New Zealand archaeologist Prof Bryce Barker and his research team hostage near remote Mount Bosavi in Papua New Guinea was a “spur of the moment” decision by their captors, two of whom had been shot in an earlier encounter with security guards at a logging site.

The governor of Hela province, Philip Undialu, said his team had only been able to begin negotiations with the captors – a criminal gang of about 20 “runners” moving guns and drugs across New Guinea – once they had moved the hostages into an area with mobile phone coverage.

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Missing Chinese billionaire banker Bao Fan assisting authorities in investigation, company says

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Tech dealmaker reported to be unreachable 10 days ago in latest case of a top executive going missing during Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption drive

The Chinese billionaire tech banker Bao Fan, who was reported missing 10 days ago, is cooperating with Chinese authorities conducting an investigation, a China-based boutique bank has said.

It is the first time China Renaissance Holdings has given a reason for the disappearance of its founder and chairman, though no details about the investigation were shared.

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Covid-19 likely emerged from laboratory leak, US energy department says

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Updated finding a departure from previous studies on how the virus emerged and comes with ‘low confidence’

The virus which drove the Covid-19 pandemic most likely emerged from a laboratory leak but not as part of a weapons program, according to an updated and classified 2021 US energy department study provided to the White House and senior American lawmakers, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday.

The department’s finding – a departure from previous studies on how the virus emerged – came in an update to a document from the office of National Intelligence director Avril Haines. It follows an FBI finding, issued with “moderate confidence”, that the virus spread after leaking out of a Chinese laboratory.

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‘They were shot in the head’: morgue gives up truth of Rodrigo Duterte’s drug war

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Crusading pathologist Raquel Fortun finds evidence of multiple murder at the direction of ‘a madman’ in the exhumed remains of young Filipinos

It was in an old university stockroom, with wooden tables salvaged from a junkyard, that Raquel Fortun began to investigate the merciless crackdown launched under the former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte.

Fortun, one of only two forensic pathologists in the country, has now spent more than 18 months examining the exhumed remains of dozens of victims of the so-called “war on drugs”, revealing serious irregularities in how their postmortems were performed – including multiple death certificates that wrongly attributed fatalities to natural causes.

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Australian professor and two local researchers held hostage in Papua New Guinea released

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Foreign minister Penny Wong says all hostages, including a New Zealand-born Australian academic, have been freed

Australia’s foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, has said all hostages taken by a Papua New Guinean criminal gang have been released, including an Australian academic, and will be reunited with their families.

“Thank you to PNG’s Government for its leadership in securing a safe & peaceful resolution,” Wong tweeted on Sunday afternoon.

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Hong Kong police arrest three after finding remains of model

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Parents and brother of Abby Choi’s ex-husband arrested after police make grisly discovery at rented village home

Hong Kong police have made three arrests over the murder and dismemberment of a 28-year-old model after what authorities allege was a financial dispute with her ex-husband’s family.

The partial remains of the influencer Abby Choi, who last week appeared on the digital cover of L’Officiel Monaco fashion magazine, were found in a village house, police said.

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WHO says avian flu cases in humans ‘worrying’ after girl’s death in Cambodia

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Child died and father tested positive for H5N1, prompting fears of possible person-to-person transmission

The discovery of two cases of bird flu within the same family in Cambodia has highlighted the concern over potential human-to-human spread of the virus, although experts have stressed the risk remains low.

On Thursday, Cambodian authorities reported an 11-year-old girl from Prey Veng province had died from H5N1, with subsequent testing of 12 of her contacts revealing that her father also had the virus.

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Year of war in Ukraine tests China’s ‘no limits’ relationship with Russia

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There are signs Beijing wants a quick political resolution to conflict as its patience with Russia wears thin

Few analysts expected China’s peace plan for Ukraine, which officials trailed all week, to have any concrete measures for solving the crisis. Their suspicions were correct. The position paper published by China’s foreign ministry on the first anniversary of the Russian invasion called for the “sovereignty of all countries” to be respected, without detailing what this meant for Ukraine. In each of the 12 points, the plan reiterated Chinese talking points about the conflict without offering a solution.

The Chinese peace plan is the culmination of a flurry of diplomatic meetings that kicked off at the Munich security conference on 17 February. There Wang Yi, China’s top diplomat, presented a bullish front to western officials, denying claims made by Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, that China was on the verge of sending weapons to Russia. Josep Borrell, the EU’s foreign policy chief, said such a move would be a “red line” for the bloc. Wang insisted China wanted peace.

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Queensland to trial GPS tracker for child offenders – as it happened

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Coles and Woolworths take responsibility for soft plastic

The environment minister, Tanya Plibersek, has provided an update on soft plastics after the sole soft plastic recycler, RedCycle, collapsed last year, saying supermarket giants Coles and Woolworths have agreed to take on responsibility for the soft plastic they sell.

What I did at the time was get the big supermarket giants around the table. I said to them, you’ve got to take responsibility for the soft plastics that your businesses are generating.

I’m very pleased today to tell you that the taskforce set up with the supermarkets has come to a conclusion and Coles and Woolies will take on responsibility for the tonnes of soft plastic that has been piling up in warehouses.

Today is the anniversary of the full scale invasion by Russia of Ukraine and we mourn those lost. We continue to condemn Russia’s illegal and immoral war and we stand with Ukraine. The government is demonstrating that by what we are doing in addition to what we have provided so far. We are providing additional defence capability, uncrewed aerial surveillance and I have issued more sanctions against Russia overnight, against 90 people and organisations which take our sanctions to in excess of a thousand. It is a heavy sanctions regime against a government which has chosen to engage in an illegal and immoral war, breaching sovereignty and the UN charter, which is why we have to stand against Russia.

What I would say is that Russia is a permanent member of the UN security council. It has a special responsibility to ensure that international law, including the UN charter which protects everyone’s sovereignty, is protected. This war, waged by Mr Putin, is an attack on sovereignty and an attack on the UN charter. We would urge China to do all it can to not only not escalate this conflict but to end it.

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Bird flu: 11-year-old girl in Cambodia dies after being infected

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Case is the country’s first known human infection with H5N1 strain since 2014, health minister says

An 11-year-old girl in Cambodia has died after being infected by a strain of avian influenza, commonly known as bird flu, the government says.

It was the first known human infection with the H5N1 strain in the country since 2014, the health minister, Mam Bunheng, said in a statement on Thursday.

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Harry Styles required to provide the story of his life for New Zealand census

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Five-yearly data drive to be conducted on 7 March, the same night as the singer’s Auckland show

Harry Styles will have to take part in the 2023 New Zealand census, which aims to capture the country as it was on the same night as his only show in the country.

The census is conducted every five years and requires everyone in the country, including overseas visitors, to take part. This year it happens to be held on the night of the British pop star’s Auckland show on 7 March.

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North Korea test-fires four missiles to show ability to launch nuclear attack

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Strategic cruise missiles hit a target after travelling 2,000km, says state media, to demonstrate ‘war posture’ of nuclear force

North Korea test-fired four strategic cruise missiles during a drill designed to demonstrate its ability to conduct a nuclear counterattack against hostile forces, its state media said.

The exercise on Thursday involved an apparently operational strategic cruise missile unit of the Korean people’s army, which fired the four Hwasal-2 missiles in the area of Kim Chaek city, North Hamgyong province, towards the sea off the east coast of the Korean peninsula, the news agency KCNA said. Other units conducted firepower training at hardened sites without live firing.

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