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HONG KONG (AP) – Hong Kong on Saturday opened a new high-speed rail link with the interior of China that will significantly reduce travel times, but also raises concerns about Beijing's influence on the semi-central region. autonomous Chinese. From a cost of more than $ 10 billion and more than eight years to build, the system aims to carry more than 80,000 passengers a day between the Asian financial center of 7 million residents and the center of neighboring production of Guangdong Province. The train travels 26 kilometers (16 miles) across Hong Kong to Shenzhen, across the border into China, in just 14 minutes, compared to about an hour now.
PHNOM PEHN, Cambodia (AP) – An Australian filmmaker was awaiting deportation from Cambodia on Saturday after receiving a royal pardon for his spying conviction for driving a drone at a political rally. An immigration police spokesman said James Ricketson would be deported on Saturday morning, a day after being released from prison. "We are now checking out a robbery for him," said General Keo Vanthan at the Associated Press. Ricketson, 69, was sentenced to six years in a suit called "Wacky" by his supporters because prosecutors never said in whose name he was spying and did not show proof of possession or transmission of secrets.
NEW DELHI (AP) – India has canceled the planned meeting between its Foreign Minister and his Pakistani counterpart on the sidelines of the US General Assembly session in New York this month, exacerbating tensions between long-time rivals. Foreign Ministry spokesman Raveesh Kumar said Friday that India's decision to leave the meeting, announced a day earlier, follows the assassination of Indian guards in Kashmir and Indian government to maintain with Pakistan has been sharply criticized by the party of Congress and other opposition groups after rebels from Indian-controlled Kashmir had killed border guards and removed a dozen.
SRINAGAR, India (AP) – Anti-Indian rebels in disputed Kashmir attacked a dozen police houses and kidnapped three of them with bodies riddled with bullets Friday, officials said. Also Friday, Indian government forces killed five suspected militants, ending a two-day shootout. The police killings took place a few days after the largest rebel group in the region asked the police to leave the Kashmiri police and stay away from counter-insurgency operations. Activists in Kashmir have increasingly targeted police working with Indian forces, accusing them of being collaborators. On Friday morning, nearly two dozen rebels stormed the homes of two villages in southern Kashmir, took away three officers on duty and a fourth person who had resigned from the police a few days earlier.
MALE, Maldives – While election officials were preparing national elections in the Maldives, the European Union said it was not sending observers because the country had not met basic monitoring conditions . In the capital, male, pink and green country banners were hung in the streets. Electoral Commission spokesman Ahmed Akram said the country was fully prepared to hold free and fair elections on Sunday. But in neighboring Sri Lanka, former president of the Maldives in exile, Mohamed Nasheed, an opposition leader, said Friday that the vote could be rigged. A decade after Maldivians took to the streets to embrace democracy in the Indian Ocean series of coral atolls, voters go to the polls in what has become a referendum on the maintenance of democracy.
OMAHA, Neb. (AP) – About 500 refugees were displaced from a Nebraska apartment complex after units were deemed uninhabitable. The Omaha World-Herald reports that Myanmar refugees lived in the apartments of Yale Park north of Omaha, including about 175 school-aged children and dozens of infants and young children. of babies. Municipal inspectors evacuated the apartments on Thursday, citing a myriad of problems ranging from dangerous electrical circuits and natural gas leaks to mouse infested units, bed bugs, lice and maggots. The refugees are now housed in community centers where they can sleep, shower and eat. Joanie Poore is with Heartland Family Service.
HANOI (AP) – Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang, the country's number two after the ruling Communist Party leader, died Friday following a serious illness, the government said. He was 61 years old. Quang died despite "the most important efforts to treat him by Vietnamese and foreign professors and doctors and by the party's care and state leaders," the statement said. He said that Quang had died in a military hospital in Hanoi but that he had not specified his illness. The state-run VnExpress online newspaper quoted a former health minister and head of a national health committee leaders, Nguyen Quoc Trieu, saying that Quang had contracted a rare and toxic virus since July last and went to Japan. six times for treatment.
ISTANBUL (AP) – Chinese authorities are placing children of Uighurs and other ethnic minorities in dozens of state-run orphanages in the western Xinjiang region. Orphanages are just the latest example of Beijing's efforts to systematically keep Xinjiang Muslim youth away from their families and culture. Uighurs fear that such efforts will erase their ethnic identity, one child at a time. In Istanbul, the Associated Press spoke to a dozen Uyghur families during the holy Muslim festival Eid al-Adha, which takes place during large family reunions. Tables in each house have been decorated with traditional dishes such as homemade noodles, freshly baked lamb and crispbread.
ISTANBUL (AP) – Every morning, Meripet wakes up to her nightmare: The Chinese government has turned four of her children into orphans, even though they and her father are alive. Meripet and her husband left the children with their grandmother at home in China when they went to look after the sick father of Meripet in Turkey. But after the Chinese authorities began locking up thousands of their ethnic Uyghur compatriots for alleged subversive crimes such as traveling abroad, a visit was made to exile. Then her mother-in-law was also taken prisoner, and Meripet learned from a friend that her children aged 3 to 8 had been placed in a de facto orphanage in the Xinjiang region, under state protection. who had broken up. his family.
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) – The spectacle and surprise of this year's three inter-Korean summits have been intense at times. The fourth could be surreal – if that happens. Imagine North Korean leader Kim Jong Un crossing the ultra-modern capital of South Korea with an armored limousine lined with bodyguards cut by crew members in military training. Or what about Kim in the evening tour through the south of Seoul, passing by the Lotte World Tower Tower to immerse yourself in the majestic line of skyline over the broad Han River – not too far from the l? where the protesters burn it regularly?
