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PORT MORESBY, Papua New Guinea (AP) — After three decades of promoting free trade as a panacea to poverty, the APEC grouping of nations that includes the U.S. and China is holding its lavish annual leaders meeting in the country that can least afford it. Barely penetrated by roads and scarred by violence, Papua New Guinea hopes the parade of world leaders will lift the mountainous Pacific nation of hundreds of tribal groups out of obscurity and attract investment. But the expense has brought criticism when the government has a budget crisis, basic medicines are scarce, and polio, eliminated from all but a handful of countries, has returned.
SINGAPORE (AP) — Leaders from Southeast Asia, China and other neighboring countries met in Singapore on Wednesday and cited progress on keeping peace in the contentious South China Sea as evidence that the region is managing to handle such issues on its own. Both the Singapore meeting and a summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum later in the week have drawn China’s leaders, Russian President Vladimir Putin and heads of other regional powers, but not President Donald Trump, who sent Vice President Mike Pence in his stead. The 10-nation Association of Southeast Asian Nations was focusing on issues of security and trade at its summit, with managing conflict in the South China Sea a perennial issue.
SINGAPORE (AP) — Myanmar’s leader Aung San Suu Kyi has rebuffed criticism over her government’s treatment of its ethnic Rohingya Muslims. U.S. Vice President Mike Pence told Suu Kyi on Wednesday that the violence, which led more than 700,000 of the country’s Rohingya minority to flee for Bangladesh since August 2017, was “without excuse.” Pence also said Myanmar’s arrests and convictions of two Reuters journalists was “deeply troubling” to millions of Americans. Pence and Suu Kyi met on the sidelines of the annual summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in Singapore. Pence said the meeting was at Suu Kyi’s request.
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — Sri Lanka’s Parliament passed a no-confidence vote against the government headed by the hastily sworn-in Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa as lawmakers convened Wednesday for the first time since the president dismissed his Cabinet and suspended the legislature last month. The motion brought by the leader of an opposition party could mean that Rajapaksa will have to resign his post but does not necessarily mean the leader whose ousting set off the crisis will be reinstated. Lawmakers supporting Ranil Wickremesinghe, whom President Maithripala Sirisena replaced with Rajapaksa on Oct. 26, had a visible majority in the chamber.
WONSAN, North Korea (AP) — For North Korean factory managers, a visit by leader Kim Jong Un is the highest of honors and quite possibly the most stressful event imaginable. The chief engineer at the Songdowon General Foodstuffs Factory had looked forward to the visit for nearly a decade. His factory churns out tons of cookies, crackers, candies and bakery goods, plus dozens of varieties of soft drinks sold around the country. In its showroom, Kwon Yong Chol proudly showed off one of his best-sellers, a nutrient soup made with spirulina, a blue-green microalgae “superfood.” “Ever since construction began everyone here had wanted the leader to visit, and this year he did.
SYDNEY (AP) — Regional security and the strengthening of ties with Japan and the U.S. will be high on the agenda for Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison when he meets leaders from both countries amid continuing concerns about the growing influence of China in the Asia-Pacific. Morrison will meet Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Friday, when Abe makes a flying visit to Darwin between a summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in Singapore and the weekend’s meeting of leaders of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation in Papua New Guinea. Abe will become the first Japanese leader to visit Darwin since the bombing of the northern Australian city by Japanese forces in World War II.
SUVA, Fiji (AP) — Heavy rainfall was affecting some voting in Fiji’s general election Wednesday, as two men who led different military coups battled for control of the island nation. The bad weather prompted the Elections Office to close 17 polling venues, affecting some 6,000 voters, according to the Fiji Times. Those people would get a chance to vote at a later date, the Times reported. Opinion polls indicate Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama is poised to win a second term after he first held democratic elections in 2014, eight years after seizing power in a coup. His main opponent is Sitiveni Rabuka, who led two military coups in the 1980s before serving seven years as prime minister.
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — When U.S. forces and their Afghan allies rode into Kabul in November 2001 they were greeted as liberators. But after 17 years of war, the Taliban have retaken half the country, security is worse than it’s ever been, and many Afghans place the blame squarely on the Americans. The United States has lost more than 2,400 soldiers in its longest war, and has spent more than $900 billion on everything from military operations to the construction of roads, bridges and power plants. Three U.S. presidents have pledged to bring peace to Afghanistan, either by adding or withdrawing troops, by engaging the Taliban or shunning them.
WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — Eight years after a methane explosion in an underground coal mine killed 29 workers, New Zealand’s government says crews will re-enter the mine to better understand what went wrong and hopefully recover some of the bodies. The announcement Wednesday by Justice Minister Andrew Little was greeted with jubilation by family members of workers killed at the Pike River mine, who for years have lobbied for the move. Two workers escaped the mine after the deadly November 2010 explosion. After several more explosions, the mine was sealed shut. New Zealand’s previous conservative government concluded the mine remained too unsafe to re-enter.
SINGAPORE (AP) — Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamed sharply criticized Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi on Tuesday for her handling of an ethnic crisis that led to mass killings and the exodus of more than 700,000 Rohingya Muslims from her country. Mahathir said Nobel Peace Prize laureate Suu Kyi was “trying to defend the indefensible” in justifying violence by Myanmar security forces against Rohingya in Rakhine state. Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya have fled to neighboring Bangladesh since August 2017. “They are actually oppressing these people to the point of, well, killing them, mass killing, and burial in graves dug by the victims and that kind of thing.
