Politics

  Beijing / AFP Chinese president Xi Jinping met with the leader of Taiwan’s opposition party on Tuesday, state media reported, as Beijing’s relations with the island’s new president deteriorate. Cross-strait ties have worsened under Taiwan’s first female president, Tsai Ing-wen whose China-sceptic Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) took office in May after a landslide victory over the Kuomintang (KMT). Tsai ...

  Tokyo / AFP Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi arrived in Tokyo on Tuesday for talks with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, her first visit since becoming her country’s de facto leader earlier this year. She and Abe are expected to discuss economic assistance and Myanmar’s peace-building process with its ethnic minorities, according to a Japanese foreign ministry official. Japan hopes ...

  Beijing / AFP Malaysia and China signed a defence deal and pledged closer cooperation in the South China Sea on Tuesday, signalling a potential strategic shift by Premier Najib Razak as his ties with the United States fray over a corruption scandal. Najib’s week-long trip marks another potential setback for Washington’s “pivot” towards Asia, two weeks after President Rodrigo Duterte ...

  Moscow / AFP A Russian activist jailed for staging solo anti-government protests claimed in a letter published on Tuesday that he was beaten and threatened with rape and murder in prison. Ildar Dadin, a 34-year-old activist serving a two-and-a-half year sentence at a prison in Russia’s northwestern region of Karelia, was the first person to be imprisoned under a ...

  Caracas /AFP Venezuela’s embattled government and opposition leaders agreed to hold talks to defuse a growing political crisis, but mistrust lingers after an attempt to recall the president was scuttled. With the mediation of the Vatican and the Union of South American Nations, the two sides agreed after hours-long talks which ended before dawn on an agenda that includes ...

  Manila / AFP Philippine church leaders on Tuesday renewed calls for an end to killings linked to President Rodrigo Duterte’s drug war as millions of people took part in traditional ceremonies to remember the dead. Duterte’s bloody campaign to rid the country of criminals has been a feature of this year’s All Saints’ Day, with some people using the ...

  Fort Lauderdale / AFP Hillary Clinton battled to contain renewed FBI focus on her emails as Donald Trump blitzed western states in the tightening race for the White House. Nine days before the vote, the 69-year-old former secretary of state hit the campaign trail hard in the battleground state of Florida. Clinton blazed through brunch at an Irish pub, ...

  Madrid / AFP Spain’s conservative leader Mariano Rajoy was sworn in on Monday for a second term as prime minister, bringing a close to 10 months of political limbo. “I swear to faithfully fulfil the obligations of prime minister and to show loyalty to the king,” Rajoy said with his hand on the Spanish constitution, at a ceremony attended ...

  Calais / AFP French authorities were on Monday clearing the last shacks in the Calais “Jungle”, signalling the end of the notorious camp, as attention turned to the thousands of migrants sleeping rough in Paris. The authorities have said that nothing will be left of the notorious Jungle, home to around 6,000 migrants until a week ago, by Monday evening. ...

  Manila / AFP The Philippines and China have reached a “friendly” understanding allowing Filipinos to fish around a disputed shoal seized by Beijing in 2012, a senior aide to President Rodrigo Duterte said on Monday. Duterte negotiated the understanding during his recent meeting in Beijing with Chinese President Xi Jinping, said Manila’s national security adviser Hermogenes Esperon. As a ...