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Every weekend, Asia Pacific Daily will provide you with a run-down of the latest hot news.
This week, the following hot news you should know:
Top 1 | US President’s visit to India fails to resolve trade disputes
US President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump wound up their two-day visit to India on Tuesday. While the visit proved to be a step forward for the India-US relationship, there were a few disappointments that cannot be overlooked.
An example of summit diplomacy, President Trump’s visit was a show of India’s diversity, history and culture. However, it also focused on enhancing defence and trade cooperation between New Delhi and Washington D.C.
During the two days of both public and private gestures by President Trump were conspicuous and appreciated.
Top 2 | South Korea, US postpone annual military drills due to virus
The South Korean and U.S. militaries announced Thursday that they were postponing their annual joint drills due to concern about a viral outbreak that has infected soldiers in both countries’ armed forces, put many troops in quarantine and closed base facilities.
Twenty South Korean soldiers and one American service member in South Korea have tested positive for the new coronavirus, which has infected about 1,600 people in the Asian country, the largest outbreak outside mainland China.
In a joint news conference, South Korean and U.S. military officers said their joint drills planned for the first half of this year will be put off until further notice. South Korean military chief Park Han-ki proposed the delay out of concerns for troop safety and Robert Abrams, the commander of the U.S. military in South Korea, accepted Park’s proposal based on the severity of the virus outbreak, said Kim Joon Rak, a spokesman at the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Top 3 | Trump accuses Schiff of leaking intelligence about Russia to hurt Sanders
President Donald Trump on Sunday accused Representative Adam Schiff of leaking classified information on Russian interference in the 2020 U.S. election to hurt Democratic presidential front-runner Bernie Sanders.
Speaking to reporters as he left the White House for a trip to India, Trump said he had not been briefed on intelligence that Russia was aiming to boost the campaign of Sanders, a U.S. senator from Vermont, and he called for a probe into Schiff for the leak. Schiff, a Democrat, denied the allegation.
A congressional source told Reuters on Friday that intelligence officials had told lawmakers Russia appears to be engaging in disinformation and propaganda campaigns to help both Sanders and Trump, who is seeking re-election. Schiff, who served as the lead prosecutor in Trump’s impeachment trial in the Senate, said Trump was seeking to turn attention away from his own actions with the comments.
Top 4 | Malaysia’s Mahathir wants nonpartisan gov’t if picked as PM
Mahathir Mohamad said Wednesday that he will form a new nonpartisan government if he is elected to return as Malaysia’s prime minister, as the king completed two days of consultations with lawmakers to resolve a political vacuum caused by the abrupt collapse of Mahathir’s ruling coalition.
Breaking his silence two days after his shocking resignation, Mahathir confirmed that his Bersatu party ditched the alliance Monday in a bid to form a new government with the United Malays National Organization, or UMNO, the party of disgraced ex-leader Najib Razak, who is on trial for corruption, and a fundamentalist Islamic party. The move had thwarted a pre-election agreement by Mahathir to hand over power to his named successor, Anwar Ibrahim.
Mahathir said he had quit to show he wasn’t power crazy and because he cannot work with the corrupt-tainted UMNO, which he had ousted in 2018 elections. He made no mention of Anwar in his televised speech, but reiterated that the lower house of Parliament should be the one to pick the prime minister.
Top 5 | Britain starts hearing US case for extraditing Assange
Britain on Monday began hearing Washington's extradition request for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, in a test case of media freedoms in the digital age and the limits of US justice.
A ruling against the 48-year-old Australian could see him jailed for 175 years if convicted on all 17 US Espionage Act charges and one count of computer hacking he faces. The charges relate to the release in 2010 by the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks of a trove of classified US government files detailing the realities of the military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq.
One video from 2007 showed an Apache helicopter attack in which US soldiers gunned down two Reuters reporters and nine Iraqi civilians in broad daylight in Baghdad. But the US extradition case is only the latest stage of a long-running legal saga that has seen Assange in some form of detention since the documents' release.
Top 6 | Egypt to bury former president Mubarak in military funeral
Egypt will on Wednesday bury its former president Hosni Mubarak, who died at the age of 91, in a military funeral in Cairo.
Mubarak ruled Egypt for 30 years until he was forced out of office by protests in 2011. He spent many of the subsequent years in jail and military hospitals before being freed in 2017. He died on Tuesday in intensive care weeks after undergoing surgery.
Egypt’s presidency and armed forces mourned the former air force officer as a hero for his role in the 1973 Arab-Israeli war. The presidency declared three days of national mourning. Egypt’s top military officials are expected to attend the funeral in an eastern suburb of Cairo, but it was not clear if President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi would do so.
Top 7 | Iranian Deputy Health Minister diagnosed with coronavirus
Tehran previously stated that at least 95 people had been diagnosed with the dangerous disease. The majority of confirmed cases in the country come from the city of Qom - a centre of traditional pilgrimage for Shia Muslims, with at least 15 Iranians dying from the disease.
Iran's Deputy Health Minister Iraj Harirchi has tested positive for the coronavirus, ILNA news agency reported on Tuesday, adding that the official is now under quarantine.
Later in the day, member of the Iranian parliament Mahmoud Sadeghi also stated his own test was positive on Twitter. Following previous reports about casualties in Iran, several countries, including Turkey, imposed temporary bans on people travelling to and from the Islamic Republic.
Top 8 | Italy seeks to calm fears in Europe as cases, deaths rise
Italy sought Wednesday to calm fears and rally international support for its efforts to contain the coronavirus even as its caseload rose to 374 and more European travelers linked to Italy got infected.
Greece registered its first positive case, in a woman who had recently traveled to Italy’s afflicted north, after Austria, Croatia and Switzerland reported their first cases Tuesday from people who had also recently visitednorthern Italy. Local authorities in Germany and Austria took quarantine measures after even unconfirmed cases were linked to Italy.
The government of Premier Giuseppe Conte urged cooperation from its European neighbors, not isolation and discrimination. The Italian government has been trying to defend its handling of the crisis, even as it acknowledges alarm over its growing caseload — more than any other country outside Asia — and inability to locate the origin.
Top 9 | Thai prime minister survives vote of no confidence
Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha and five cabinet ministers comfortably survived a vote of no confidence in parliament on Friday, a week after a court ban on 11 opposition lawmakers increased the ruling coalition’s parliamentary majority.
The Constitutional Court dissolved the opposition Future Forward Party, the third-largest in parliament, and banned 11 of its lawmakers from politics for a decade on the grounds the party breached the law by taking loans from its leader. The court’s decision has sparked protests by university students around the country.
Prayuth had been expected to survive the censure motion even before the reduction in opposition numbers in parliament. But he faced some of the fiercest public criticism since he transitioned last year from military ruler to head of an elected government.
Top 10 | IOC member casts doubt on postponing or moving Tokyo Games
A senior member of the International Olympic Committee said Tuesday that if it proves too dangerous to hold the Olympics in Tokyo this summer because of the coronavirus outbreak, organizers are more likely to cancel it altogether than to postpone or move it.
Dick Pound, a former Canadian swimming champion who has been on the IOC since 1978, making him its longest-serving member, estimated there is a three-month window — perhaps a two-month one — to decide the fate of the Tokyo Olympics, meaning a decision could be put off until late May.
Pound encouraged athletes to keep training. About 11,000 are expected for the Olympics, which open July 24, and 4,400 are bound for the Paralympics, which open Aug. 25.
Related news:
APD | US President’s visit to India fails to resolve trade disputes
APD | Iran moves high-level resources to fight against novel coronavirus
(ASIA PACIFIC DAILY)
