Category Archives: Asia Pacific

US North Korea envoy says Trump is ready to ‘end this war’

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Stephen Biegun says Kim Jong-un has committed to ‘destruction’ of plutonium and uranium sites ahead of talks

The US’s special envoy for North Korea has said Donald Trump was willing to offer diplomatic relations and economic aid in return for progress towards “closing the door on 70 years of war and hostility” on the Korean peninsula.

Stephen Biegun, who is due to visit Seoul on Sunday for talks with his counterpart, Kim Hyok-chol, warned that Washington has “contingencies” in place if denuclearisation talks fail, but said: “President Trump is ready to end this war. It is over. It is done. We’re not going to invade North Korea. We are not seeking to topple the regime.”

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Philippines tops world internet usage index with an average 10 hours a day

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South-east Asia has three countries in the top five, while Japan comes in last

South-east Asia is one of the most internet-addicted regions on the planet, with the Philippines topping the global list with an average 10 hours and 2 minutes of screen time every day.

The country was joined in the top five by Thailand and Indonesia, according to findings in a new report on online habits released by HootSuite and We Are Social.

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Tokyo 2020 organisers cut crowds at sailing events over tsunami risk

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Olympic authorities reduce crowd size to make evacuations easier

The organisers of next year’s Olympic Games in Tokyo have decided to cut the number of spectators for the sailing events by a third so they can be quickly evacuated to higher ground in the event of a tsunami.

The 2020 Tokyo Olympics organising committee had initially planned to allow up to 5,000 people to watch the sailing events off Enoshima island, just south of the Japanese capital, according to the public broadcaster NHK.

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New Zealand baffled after protected little blue penguins stolen from nests

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Two men wielding a crowbar raid wild nests in Napier, possibly to sell the animals into the illegal wildlife trade

Two of the world’s smallest and most vulnerable penguins have been stolen in a brazen overnight raid on their nests in New Zealand.

Little blue penguins – or kororā – are native to New Zealand and are listed by the Department of Conservation (DoC) as an at-risk, declining population. Little blues are the world’s smallest penguin, and are threatened by common predators such as dogs and cats, urban development on their coastal environment and being hit by cars, boats or caught in nets.

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New Zealand brings first ‘fake mānuka honey’ prosecution

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Company is accused of adding synthetic chemicals, including one used in tanning lotion, to honey

A mānuka honey company is being prosecuted by New Zealand’s food safety agency over claims it added artificial chemicals to its product.

In the first case of its kind, the company is accused of adding synthetic chemicals – including one commonly used in tanning lotion – to honey it sold as “mānuka”.

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Chinese city seeks young blood: how ageing Nanjing lures new talent

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The next 15 megacities #12: The ancient capital of China is pulling out all the stops in a bid to defuse its ticking demographic timebomb

Tan Jingquan is exactly the kind of person the ancient Chinese city of Nanjing wants to attract. The 38-year-old had been searching rival cities for possible sites for his biotech startup for years – until the Nanjing government finally made him an offer he couldn’t refuse.

“I visited and explored opportunities in nearly a dozen cities,” recalls Tan, a native of Wuhan in central China. “It turned out Nanjing has the best combination of policy incentives and market potential for small startups.”

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The miracle method for sustainable rice that scientists dismissed | John Vidal

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A technique developed by a Jesuit priest is producing bigger harvests – and reducing emissions of a crop responsible for 1.5% of greenhouse gases

The fragrant jasmine rice growing on the left side of Kreaougkra Junpeng’s five-acre field stands nearly five feet tall.

Each plant has 15 or more tillers, or stalks, and the grains hang heavy from them. The Thai farmer says this will be his best-ever harvest in 30 years and he will reap it four weeks earlier than usual.

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Toxic smog forces Bangkok to close hundreds of schools

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Thai capital has been shrouded in murky haze for weeks, forcing residents to don masks and sparking criticism of government

Toxic smog forced Bangkok authorities to issue an unprecedented order to shut nearly 450 schools on Wednesday as authorities struggled to manage a pollution crisis that has stirred widespread concern.

The Thai capital has been shrouded in murky haze for weeks, forcing residents to don masks and sparking social media criticism of the uneven response by the government.

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Huawei’s Meng Wanzhou appears in court on eve of US China trade talks

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Extradition case in Canada drags on as Donald Trump prepares to meet Beijing’s top trade envoy in Washington

The chief financial officer of Huawei, Meng Wanzhou, has made her first appearance in a Canadian court in more than a month, part of a high-stakes dispute that threatens to cast a pall over this week’s US-China trade talks.

Meng, the daughter of the Chinese telecoms company’s founder, attended the hearing in British Columbia supreme court on Tuesday, just two days before Donald Trump and Chinese vice premier Liu He are scheduled to meet in Washington.

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Indonesia to let UN workers into West Papua as violence continues

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UNHCHR wants access after Indonesian military crackdown in response to guerrilla attack

Indonesia has agreed in principle to allow the UN office of the human rights commissioner into West Papua amid continuing violence in the region.

The long-running low-level insurgency violently escalated late last year, after West Papuan guerrillas attacked a construction site in Nduga, killing at least 17 people they claimed were Indonesian military but who Jakarta insists were civilian workers.

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Huawei indictments: sanctions busting, industrial espionage and a stolen robot

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Indictments packed with emails and transactions allegedly showing how technology giant carried out criminal conspiracies

The twin criminal indictments against Huawei unveiled by US authorities on Monday are packed with emails and financial transactions allegedly showing how the Chinese technology giant carried out criminal conspiracies.

But the finer points of the 23 charges are less important than the overall shot they deliver across China’s bows. The US considers Huawei to be an arm of the Chinese state – and their devices to be potential spying equipment for Beijing.

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Manila’s jeepneys – in pictures

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Part of the Philippine urban landscape for decades, jeepneys, small buses originally made from military vehicles left by the Americans after the second world war, are being phased out. Pollution and safety concerns mean jeepneys 15 years or older will be taken off the streets by 2020. Also threatened are the livelihoods of artists who customise them

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What happened to the deal – and the refugees – surviving Australian and US politics? | Anne Richard

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I signed the agreement to resettle some of Australia’s refugees from Nauru and Manus Island in the US. I wanted to see how they are faring now

Two years ago, Australia’s then prime minister Malcolm Turnbull called to congratulate Donald Trump on his inauguration, and to elicit the new president’s support for continuing an agreement between Australia and the US. Australia had stopped thousands of asylum seekers from reaching its shores and had arranged to detain them on islands in the South Pacific; the US had agreed to resettle some in America. The transcript of the phone conversation makes clear that the deal was a top priority for Turnbull and an unwelcome surprise for Trump, who called it “a rotten deal”.

Related: US believed Australia would take more refugees in exchange for Nauru and Manus deal

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Campaigners say case of Bahraini footballer Hakeem al-Araibi now an ‘emergency’

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• Al-Araibi has been detained in Thailand since November
• ‘We are clearly facing a human rights emergency’

Activists campaigning for the release of the Bahraini refugee footballer Hakeem al-Araibi, who has been detained in Thailand since November after an Interpol red notice was wrongly issued against him, say his plight has become an emergency.

The warnings came from Brendan Schwab of the World Players Association and the former Australia captain Craig Foster after news that Bahrain has formally submitted an extradition request for Al-Araibi’s return.

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Mugged by macaques: the urban monkey gangs of Kuala Lumpur

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The next 15 megacities #10: As Malaysia’s ever-expanding capital swallows up their rainforest habitat, the macaques are turning to guerrilla warfare

The gang stop and stare, attention spiked by our car doors slamming. Ten pairs of eyes flit between our backpacks and our faces. Is it worth mugging us? Do our bags contain bananas or useless, inedible wallets and cameras? The monkeys of Kuala Lumpur’s Ampang district decide against it and head further down the road in the hunt for victims. The morning joggers here run with sticks.

“Twenty years ago this was jungle,” says Viswa Hattan, an accountant jogging in the area. Gated high-rises loom ahead of us, the roads leading to them flanked by forest too dense to enter without machetes. Four macaques, babies clinging to their chests, loiter on a metal road barrier uphill from a construction site. “This was their area,” says Hattan as a nearby male macaque begins vigorously masturbating. “We’ve taken it from them.”

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Wang Quanzhang: China sentences human rights lawyer to four years in prison

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Lawyer who defended activists, victims of land seizures, and members of Falun Gong found guilty of ‘subversion of state power’

The prominent Chinese rights lawyer Wang Quanzhang has been sentenced to four and a half years in prison for subversion.

A court in Tianjin heard on Monday that Wang had been found “guilty of subversion of state power”.

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Hakeem al-Araibi’s detention not Sheikh Salman’s responsibility, AFC says

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Asian Football Confederation, which has come under fire for failing to call for the refugee footballer’s release, says its president was recused from overseeing the region 18 months ago

The Asian Football Confederation claims its president, Sheikh Salman bin Ibrahim al-Khalifa, is not responsible for matters regarding the Thai detention of Hakeem al-Araibi because he was recused from overseeing the region 18 months ago out of conflict-of-interest concerns.

The new claim came in response to a call from the World Players Association for Salman to be disqualified from office if the refugee footballer was returned to Bahrain.

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New Zealand housing crisis: just 47 ‘affordable’ homes built in six months

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Jacinda Ardern’s flagship KiwiBuild policy labelled ‘a failure’ amid delays and claims homes are too expensive

Jacinda Ardern’s flagship housing policy is in dire straits after the government admitted it won’t meet its target of building 1,000 affordable homes in its first year – and is set to fall short by 700.

New Zealand house prices are among the most unaffordable in the world, with Auckland the seventh most expensive city to buy a home, and all three major cities considered “severely unaffordable” by the latest Demographia international housing affordability survey.

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Philippines: bombs at cathedral during mass kill 20 people – video

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Two explosions at a Roman Catholic cathedral killed 20 people and injured dozens more on the southern island of Jolo in the Philippines. The attack came nearly a week after minority Muslims in the predominantly Roman Catholic nation endorsed a new autonomous region in the south. Voters in Sulu province, where Jolo is located, rejected it

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Twin explosions kill 20 people at Philippines cathedral

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First blast in or near church on island of Jolo during Sunday mass is followed by second outside compound

Twenty people were killed and 81 injured when two bombs exploded outside a Roman Catholic cathedral on a southern Philippine island where Muslim militants are active security officials have said.

The country’s national police chief said the first bomb went off in or near Jolo cathedral during a mass on Sunday, followed by a second blast outside the compound as government forces were responding to the attack. Oscar Albayalde said the dead included troops and civilians.

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