A Chinese dissident who was stuck inside a Taiwanese airport transit area after he refused to fly on to China says he has arrived in Canada after being granted asylum.

Chen Siming arrived in Taipei on 22 September, after travelling through Thailand and Laos. When he landed at Taipei’s international airport he refused to reboard, requesting assistance to resettle in a third country.

A chicken-shaped lamp. A toilet paper holder in the shape of a smiling velociraptor. An apron that catches beard hair during shaving. The list of unusual products goes on.

Among the more everyday items are cleaning products, smartwatches, novelty T-shirts, knock-off sneakers and barbecue tools, but the common thread across all of them is that everything is incredibly, mindbogglingly cheap.

This is Temu, the latest Chinese shopping app to take the internet by storm and raise questions about provenance, competition and value.

Venezuela: Arrest warrant issued for Juan Guaido

An arrest warrant has been issued for Venezuela’s former opposition leader Juan Guaido. The prosecutor’s office said it would ask for interpol’s help in his apprehension.

The Venezuelan prosecutor’s office on Thursday issued an arrest warrant for former opposition politician Juan Guaido.

Guaido — who is living in exile in the United States — is accused of treason, usurpation of functions, money laundering and association with a view to committing a crime, said Attorney General Tarek William Saab.

The prosecutor said “Guaido used the resources of PDVSA (the public oil giant) to cause losses close to or greater than $19 billion,” adding that he relied on “revelations” provided to the press “by a federal court in the United States.”

Authorities looking to Interpol for assistance

The Venezuelan government says it had 27 different probes of Guaido under way but this is the first time it has sought his arrest.

Dutch-Polish spat after Legia Warsaw footballers held

Poland and the Netherlands traded barbs and accusations Friday after Dutch police arrested two footballers from Polish club Legia Warsaw amid violent scenes during their Europa Conference League clash against AZ Alkmaar.

Dutch police said in a statement they had arrested two Legia Warsaw players who had assaulted two AZ Alkmaar staff members “to such an extent that they needed medical attention.”

The two players have been widely named as Portuguese midfielder Josue Pesqueira and Serbian centre-back Radovan Pankov.

The confrontation took place when the Dutch police blocked the Legia Warsaw team bus “for the players’ own safety” because visiting fans were still being escorted from the ground after the game, which AZ Alkmaar won 1-0.

“A number of players and officials apparently disagreed with this and started to become violent,” Dutch police said.

Riot police boarded the bus and took the two players into custody, where they are being investigated for assault.

Muneo Suzuki confident Russia will win war against Ukraine

THE ASAHI SHIMBUN

October 6, 2023 at 16:54 JST

Upper House member Muneo Suzuki of Nippon Ishin (Japan Innovation Party) told a Russian state news agency that he believes Moscow will emerge victorious in its war with Ukraine, it has been learned.

“While a special military operation is continuing, Russia will win, and Russia will not yield to Ukraine,” Suzuki said in an interview with the Sputnik news agency.

“Without any concern and with 100 percent confidence, I believe in and understand Russia’s future and its tomorrow.”

Sputnik distributed a footage of Suzuki’s interview early on Oct. 4. It said the video was taken as a message to its readers.

‘You can still smell the blood’: Shock turns to grief in Ukraine’s Hroza

Relatives struggling to cope after attack that killed more than 50 people in tiny village in northeastern Ukraine.

The missile attack was sudden and devastating.

In an instant, more than 50 people – or one-sixth of the population of Hroza, a remote village in Ukraine’s northeast – were wiped out.

Among those killed on Thursday in one of the deadliest attacks since Russia invaded Ukraine some 20 months ago was Olya, 36, who is survived by three children. Her husband died, too.

“It would have been better if I had died,” Olya’s father, Valeriy Kozyr said at the local cemetery as he prepared to bury her and his son-in-law.

Iranian opposition figures have demanded the release of complete CCTV footage of an incident in which a 16-year-old girl, now in a coma, collapsed after a claimed encounter with hijab police on the Tehran metro.

Armita Geravand remains in hospital after the incident on Sunday. Authorities have released footage that they say substantiates their claim that Armita fainted due to a drop in blood pressure, but witnesses and rights groups abroad allege that she fell during a confrontation with agents because she was not wearing the hijab.

Uganda opposition leader Bobi Wine seized at airport

The former presidential candidate had been returning from South Africa to promote a documentary about himself. The government had banned his supporters from greeting him en masse.

The most prominent opposition figure in Ugandan politics, former popstar Bobi Wine, was grabbed by security agents after he landed at the country’s main airport.

Wine, whose real name is Robert Kyagulanyi, was rushed into a car outside the Entebbe International Airport, close to the capital of Kampala, and taken to his home in the town of Kasangati, some 50 kilometers (30 miles) away.

While security officials denied that the opposition leader had been detained, Wine himself said that he had been placed under de facto house arrest, with armed personnel stationed outside his home.

Armenia, Azerbaijan accuse each other other of cross-border firing

Armenia and Azerbaijan accused each other of opening cross-border fire Thursday, adding to tensions between the arch-foes after Baku seized control of its breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region from Armenian separatists.

Azerbaijani troops “discharged fire at a vehicle transporting provisions for personnel stationed at Armenian combat outposts” in the east, Yerevan’s defence ministry said.

Azerbaijan’s defence ministry meanwhile said Armenian forces fired on positions in its Kalbajar district.

Both sides said there were no casualties.

Almost all of Karabakh’s ethnic Armenian population fled for Armenia after Baku launched a lightning offensive last month.

Armenian separatists – who had who had controlled the region for three decades – have agreed to reintegrate with Azerbaijan.

Relations between the neighbours are poisoned by ethnic hatred ensuing from two wars over Karabakh in three decades.

Exchanges of fire at the border between the two countries are common.

Fukushima nuclear plant starts 2nd release of treated radioactive wastewater into the sea

Japan’s wrecked Fukushima nuclear power plant said it began releasing a second batch of treated radioactive wastewater into the sea on Thursday after the first round of discharges ended smoothly.

Plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings said workers activated a pump to dilute the treated water with large amounts of seawater, slowly sending the mixture into the ocean through an underground tunnel.

The wastewater discharges, which are expected to continue for decades, have been strongly opposed by fishing groups and neighboring countries including South Korea, where hundreds of people staged protest rallies. China banned all imports of Japanese seafood, badly hurting Japanese seafood producers and exporters.

In this city, the right to own a car starts at $76,000. And that doesn’t include the car

Elizabeth Polanco de los Santos, a New York college student, arrived in Dubai in July meaning to take only an hours-long layover during an international trip. But because she allegedly touched an airport security officer’s arm, she was detained there for more than two months and endured the threat of spending more than a year in prison before she was cleared to return home Tuesday, according to an advocacy group which supported her.

Polanco’s nightmare stay in Dubai began as she traveled back to New York City from Istanbul with a friend on 14 July when her ordeal began. The 21-year-old, a business arts major at Lehman College in the Bronx, had stopped there for a connecting flight when airport customs officers told her to take off a waist compression device she was wearing after having surgery.

Tunisia arrests opposition figure as crackdown escalates

Abir Moussi is the latest prominent opponent of President Kais Saied to have been detained or imprisoned. Her party alleges she was forced into a car and taken to a security center.

Tunisian police detained the leader of an opposition party Tuesday night outside the presidential palace, her party said.

Abir Moussi, the head of the Free Destourian Party (FDL) and an outspoken critic of President Kais Saied, wanted to file an appeal over local elections expected at the end of the year.

Instead, her party said she was forced into a car and taken to a security center in a Tunisian suburb. Her lawyers were denied access to her, the party added.

“What happened was a kidnapping in front of the presidency, and she is being held at the police station,”  lawyer Nafaa Laribi said.

There have been no comments from Tunisian authorities.

Moussi is a supporter of late president Zine El Abidine ben Ali, the dictator who was ousted after mass protests in 2011.

Pope warns world ‘is collapsing’ due to climate change, urges action at COP28

Pope Francis warned Wednesday the world “is collapsing” due to global warming, urging participants of the upcoming COP28 climate talks to agree to binding policies on phasing out fossil fuels.

Eight years after his landmark thesis outlined the devastation of manmade climate change, the 86-year-old pontiff published a follow-up that warned that some damage was “already irreversible”.

“With the passage of time, I have realised that our responses have not been adequate, while the world in which we live is collapsing and may be nearing the breaking point,” he wrote in the 12-page letter.

But he said the next round of UN climate talks opening in Dubai on November 30 “can represent a change of direction”, if participants make binding agreements on moving from fossil fuels to clean energy sources such as wind and solar.

Only a real commitment to change “can enable international politics to recover its credibility”, wrote the pope.

After 2 years in office, Kishida may call snap election soon

There is speculation among Japanese lawmakers that Prime Minister Fumio Kishida may call a snap election in the near future to regain his political footing, as two years have passed since he took office in October 2021.

Both the ruling coalition and opposition parties are wary of the prospect that Kishida may dissolve the House of Representatives for a general election during the extraordinary parliamentary session due to kick off on Oct 20, though he has repeatedly denied the possibility.

As approval ratings for his cabinet have dropped to the lowest levels since he became the premier two years ago, Kishida’s decision on whether to go ahead with the move may hinge on the outcome of two upcoming national by-elections later this month, observers said.

China censored this photo of two athletes. Was it for a perceived Tiananmen massacre reference?

 

China appears to have censored a photograph of two Chinese hurdlers embracing after a race because their lane numbers formed an accidental reference to the Tiananmen massacre in 1989.

The image captures Lin Yuwei, from lane 6, and Wu Yanni, in lane 4, hugging following the women’s 100-meter hurdles final at the Asian Games in Hangzhou.

As they stood together, stickers showing their lane numbers formed “6 4”, a pairing widely seen as a reference to June 4, 1989.

That day Chinese military tanks rolled into the capital Beijing during a bloody crackdown to clear students protesting for democracy in Tiananmen Square.