Politics

  Taipei / AFP A top Taiwanese intelligence official on Thursday urged the island’s former agents not to travel to China, citing safety risks as relations with Beijing grow increasingly tense. Kuo Chung-hsin, deputy director of Taiwan’s National Security Bureau, told reporters in parliament that “the current atmosphere is not suitable” for former and retired intelligence officers to visit China. “China ...

Beijing / AFP Chinese police have shot dead three people who allegedly attacked a Communist Party office in the restive Xinjiang region on Wednesday, state media said, in the bloodiest such incident in months. The three “rioters” drove up to a local party office in Moyu County and “detonated (an) explosive device”, killing two and injuring three others, the official ...

  Pearl Harbor / AFP The leaders of war-time enemies America and Japan made a poignant joint pilgrimage to Pearl Harbor, issuing symbolic declarations about the power of reconciliation and warning against the drumbeat of conflict. Seventy-five years after Japanese pilots brought war to idyllic Hawaii and dragged the United States into World War II, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe offered ...

Berlin / AFP German police on Wednesday detained a Tunisian national on suspicion of having ties to Anis Amri, the suspected Berlin truck attacker gunned down by Italian police last week, prosecutors said. “The deceased suspect Anis Amri had saved the number of this 40-year-old Tunisian national in his phone. The investigations indicate that he could have been involved in ...

  Vienna / AFP International observer body the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) confirmed on Wednesday being the victim of a “major” cyber attack. “Early November the OSCE became aware of a major information security incident,” OSCE spokeswoman Mersiha Causevic Podzic said via email. The attack “compromis[ed] the confidentiality” of the OSCE’s IT network and put “its ...

  Hong Kong / AFP Two ousted pro-independence Hong Kong lawmakers on Wednesday announced they were making a final bid to overturn a controversial Beijing-linked ban preventing them from taking up their seats in parliament. Yau Wai-ching and Baggio Leung were elected in citywide polls in September but deliberately misread their oaths of office during their swearing-in ceremony, inserting expletives and ...

  Dhaka / AFP Four Bangladeshi fishermen were injured when Myanmar’s navy allegedly opened fire on them while they were fishing along the countries’ troubled border in the Bay of Bengal, an official said on Wednesday. A group of 14 fishermen, four of whom have been hospitalised with bullet wounds, told coastguard officials that a Myanmar navy ship had entered ...

  New York / AFP The mother of Juana and Ines Alejandro took a deep breath, put on a brave face and handed her toddlers over to strangers at the Mexican border to be smuggled into the United States. That was 17 years ago. For the mother, going back to the poverty of her village in Oaxaca in Mexico was out ...

  Honolulu / AFP Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe travels on Tuesday to Hawaii’s Pearl Harbor, the site of a sneak attack by his country that provoked America into entering World War II, to reinforce what the leader calls “the power of reconciliation.” Abe, who was to be hosted by US President Barack Obama, would be the first Japanese premier to ...

  Bucharest / AFP Romania’s president on Tuesday rejected the left-wing Social Democrats’ candidate for prime minister, Sevil Shhaideh, who would have been the EU’s country first female and Muslim premier. “I have properly analysed the arguments for and against and I have decided not to accept this proposal,” Klaus Iohannis told reporters in a televised statement. “I call on the ...