简体中文
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 |** **With tears and flowers, Britain mourns 'hero' Captain Tom Moore**
With flowers and lights, Britain paid tribute on Wednesday to Captain Tom Moore, 100, who touched the hearts of millions by offering a simple message of hope and self-sacrifice during the COVID-19 lockdown.
Moore, who raised tens of millions of pounds for the National Health Service by walking up and down his garden, leaning on a frame, died on Tuesday in Bedford Hospital after suffering pneumonia and COVID-19. He had been fighting cancer for 5 years.
Outside his home in Marston Moretaine, 50 miles (80 km) north of London, children laid flowers. One message read: “Rest in Peace Captain Tom. We love you. X.”
**Top 2 |** **Tokyo Olympics organizers unveil their pandemic playbook**
The organizers of the delayed Tokyo Olympics unveiled a set of rules governing how athletes move about and interact in order to avoid the spread of the COVID-19 pathogen, assuming that the games will go ahead this summer as planned.
Olympians should be tested before and after they arrive in Japan and then at least every four days, with many of their movements in the country limited to a pre-determined plan, according to the first version of the “Playbook” unveiled on Wednesday. The document was prepared by the Tokyo Organizing Committee, the International Olympic Committee and the International Paralympic Committee.
**Top 3 |** **Biden could change course in high court health care case**
The pending Supreme Court case on the fate of the Affordable Care Act could give the Biden administration its first opportunity to chart a new course in front of the justices.
The health care case, argued a week after the election in November, is one of several matters, along with immigration and a separate case on Medicaid work requirements, where the new administration could take a different position from the Trump administration at the high court.
While a shift would be in line with President Joe Biden’s political preferences, it could prompt consternation at the court. Justices and former officials in Democratic and Republican administrations routinely caution that new administrations should generally be reluctant to change positions before the court.
**Top 4 |** **UAE adopts amendments to grant citizenship to investors and other professionals**
The United Arab Emirates has adopted amendments that would allow the Gulf state to grant citizenship to investors and other professionals including scientists, doctors and their families, the government said on Saturday.
“The UAE cabinet, local Emiri courts and executive councils will nominate those eligible for the citizenship under clear criteria set for each category,” Dubai’s ruler and UAE Vice President Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum said in a twitter post.
“The law allows receivers of the UAE passport to keep their existing citizenship,” Sheikh Mohammed added.
It was unclear if new passport holders would benefit from the public welfare system. The UAE spends billions of dollars each year on free education, healthcare, housing loans and grants for its estimated 1.4 million citizens.
**Top 5 |** **Italy president seeks help from lower house to revive coalition**
Italian President Sergio Mattarella, looking to overcome a political crisis that has brought down the government in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, said on Friday he believed the collapsed coalition could still be revived.
Following three days of talks with party leaders, Mattarella asked lower house speaker Roberto Fico to mediate between the estranged parties, telling him to report back on Tuesday.
"It is necessary to set up a government as soon as possible," said Mattarella, adding that Italy was being severely tested by a health, economic and social emergency.
In a brief televised statement, Fico thanked Mattarella for entrusting him with the job of sounding out the members of the preceding government coalition, the center-left Democratic Party (DP), the Five-Star Movement, and the centrist Italia Viva party led by Matteo Renzi, a former prime minister.
**Top 6 |** **EU admits blocking COVID-19 vaccine exports to UK a 'blunder'**
EU officials confessed on Saturday to a "blunder" in invoking Northern Ireland Brexit emergency powers during a showdown with Britain over vaccines, and London said it expected its supply of COVID-19 shots would not be interrupted.
The European Union has fallen far behind Britain and the United States in the race to vaccinate its public. It announced on Friday it would impose export controls on vaccines, widely seen as a threat to prevent doses from being sent to Britain.
But it was forced to reverse part of the announcement within hours, after both Britain and Ireland complained about plans to impose emergency export controls for vaccines across the land border between Ireland and British-ruled Northern Ireland.
**Top 7 |** **Pope institutes Catholic day to honour the elderly**
Pope Francis on Sunday instituted a “World day for Grandparents and the Elderly” in the Roman Catholic Church to be marked once a year to honour them and to underscore their importance to society.
Francis, making the surprise announcement at his Sunday noon address, said it would be marked on the fourth Sunday of July each year in Catholic communities around the world.
The Catholic Church already has a World Day of Peace, which Pope Paul instituted in 1967, a World Day of Youth, which Pope John Paul II established in 1984, and a World Day of the Poor, which Francis started in 2017.
**Top 8 |** **HSBC sets up private banking business in Thailand, second in Southeast Asia**
HSBC Holdings PLC said on Monday it had set up a new private banking business in Thailand, the Asia-focused lender’s second onshore expansion in Southeast Asia, as it seeks to grab a bigger share of the growing rich population.
HSBC said the new private bank, which is in one of the most promising wealth markets in Asia, will help it provide clients with access to international capital markets by leveraging its existing infrastructure of advisory and investment methodologies in Asia.
“In Thailand and across ASEAN, private wealth is often created and built through business growth and expansion and as intra-regional trade and activity rebound, we expect commercial, people and wealth flows to increase,” said Philip Kunz, HSBC’s head of global private banking for Southeast Asia.
Last year, HSBC combined its global private banking and retail wealth businesses to create a new unit that manages more than $1.4 trillion in clients’ assets, with half coming from Asia.
**Top 9 |** **Senate set to confirm Buttigieg for transportation secretary**
The Senate is poised to approve Pete Buttigieg to be transportation secretary, the first openly gay person ever confirmed to a Cabinet post, tasked with advancing President Joe Biden’s wide-ranging agenda of rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure and fighting climate change.
Buttigieg’s nomination was set for a final vote Tuesday in the full Senate, after the 39-year-old former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, and Biden’s one-time rival in the Democratic presidential primaries received bipartisan praise at his confirmation hearing last week.
Praised by Biden as bringing a “new voice” to the administration, Buttigieg would take over a Transportation Department with 55,000 employees and a budget of tens of billions of dollars. He has pledged to quickly get to work promoting safety and restoring consumer trust in America’s transportation networks as airlines, buses, city subway systems and Amtrak reel from plummeting ridership in the coronavirus pandemic.
**Top 10 |** **Australian prime minister says he invited Biden Down Under**
Australia’s prime minister said he invited President Joe Biden to visit in September during a “very warm and engaging" phone call between the two leaders on Thursday.
The White House later said Biden described Australia as an anchor of stability in the “Indo-Pacific and the world.”
Morrison invited Biden to visit Australia to mark the 70th anniversary of the ANZUS Treaty, a defense agreement that once included New Zealand and was signed on Sept. 1, 1950.
(ASIA PACIFIC DAILY)
