HONG KONG (AP) — Dozens of pro-democracy protesters were in a tense standoff Tuesday night with a large number of riot police near Hong Kong’s government headquarters. Television stations showed hundreds of police wearing helmets and holding shields and batons facing off with student-led protesters, who have occupied key roads and streets in Hong Kong’s business district for more than two weeks. The two sides have been locked in a stalemate after the government called off negotiations last week.
HONG KONG (AP) — It’s a protest for political reform — so why are people at the scene worshipping deities, playing pingpong and singing “Happy Birthday”? As Hong Kong’s pro-democracy street protests enter a third week, the civil disobedience movement has given rise to some increasingly bizarre scenes, especially in Mong Kok, a boisterous, seedy district where a haphazard protest camp has attracted a motley cast of characters. Here are just a few of them:
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — After vanishing from the public eye for nearly six weeks, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is back, ending rumors that he was gravely ill, deposed or worse. Now, a new, albeit smaller, mystery has emerged: Why the cane?
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — After an avalanche of data breaches, South Korea’s national identity card system has been raided so thoroughly by thieves that the government says it might have to issue new ID numbers to every citizen over 17 at a possible cost of billions of dollars. The admission is an embarrassment for a society that prides itself on its high-tech skills and has some of the fastest Internet access.
MANILA, Philippines (AP) — Dozens of activists burned a mock U.S. flag as they protested at the U.S. Embassy in Manila on Tuesday, demanding that Washington hand over to the Philippines a U.S. Marine suspected in the killing of a transgender Filipino that the demonstrators labeled a hate crime. Jeffrey Laude, 26, was found dead, apparently strangled and drowned, beside a toilet bowl in a motel room in Olongapo city, northwest of Manila, shortly after he checked in late Saturday, allegedly with a Marine.
BEIJING (AP) — An airfield in southern China from which the famed Flying Tigers took off to fight Japanese warplanes is being converted to battle a new enemy: drought. Aircraft equipped for cloud seeding operations began using World War II-era Zhijiang Airport in Hunan province last month as part of a trial operation, China’s official Xinhua News Agency said Tuesday.
BEIJING (AP) — Authorities in China have ordered books by Chinese-American scholar Yu Ying-shih to be removed from sale, as Beijing expresses its displeasure with writers showing support for pro-democracy movements in Hong Kong and elsewhere, bookstores and publishers said. The ban, which has been widely reported on Chinese social media since Saturday, also restricts the publication or sale in stores and online of books by several other authors, including liberal economist Mao Yushi, constitutional law professor Zhang Qianfan, Taiwanese writer Giddens Ko and Hong Kong critic Leung Mao-tao.
ISLAMABAD (AP) — Top Pakistan and Indian military officials spoke Tuesday about recent clashes along the border with the Himalayan region of Kashmir, hoping to end violence that killed 20 people in the past week, two Pakistani army officials said. The director of the Pakistan army’s military operations spoke with his Indian counterpart in a hotline call to convey his concern over Indian border guards’ “consistent unprovoked firing on (the) civil population,” an official said.
In this photo made with a slow shutter speed by Binsar Bakkara, volcanic lightning is seen from Jeraya village, about 7 kilometers from erupting Mount Sinabung in Indonesia’s North Sumatra province. The 2,600-meter (8,530-foot) volcano released hot clouds six times Tuesday. The volcano’s alert status remains at the third-highest level, advising residents to stand ready to flee if conditions worsen. More than 3,200 people are staying in 16 temporary shelters due to Sinabung’s recent eruptions.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Despite worsening U.S.-North Korean relations, an American charity is ramping up efforts against an epidemic of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis in the isolated country, where it says it is making inroads in fighting the deadly disease. The Eugene Bell Foundation travels to North Korea twice-a-year, bringing high-end equipment and drugs to treat TB patients at old-world facilities. The disease has found fertile ground in North Korea, where the population has been weakened by malnutrition since a famine in the 1990s. The foundation returns this month on a whirlwind, three-week mission to help hundreds of patients.
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Authorities in Afghanistan say two Afghan civilians have been killed in a roadside bomb blast in the country’s capital, Kabul. An Interior Ministry statement said three civilians were wounded in the explosion, which happened Tuesday in a western part of the city.
HYDERABAD, India (AP) — Rescue workers and soldiers cleared uprooted trees and electrical poles blocking roads in eastern India after a tropical cyclone killed at least 24 people and demolished tens of thousands of mud huts. In Japan, a tropical storm killed at least one person and injured 75 before heading out to sea Tuesday morning. As weather improved in India on Monday, the air force used planes and helicopters to drop food packets in affected places in and around Visakhapatnam, the city hit worst by Sunday’s severe cyclone, said a statement by India’s Home Ministry.
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Even when Kim Jong Un was nowhere to be seen, he was everywhere. From “Saturday Night Live” spoofs to the wild theories of journalists across the globe trying to parse his five-week absence from the public eye, the 30-ish leader of North Korea captured nearly as many headlines as he did when he threatened to nuke his enemies last year.
NAYPYITAW, Myanmar (AP) — The only question opposition lawmaker U Win Htein asked Parliament last session was for permission to remove his silk turban, saying it was causing him headaches and hair loss. The 72-year-old, known for his irreverent sense of humor, admits he was just teasing. But the speaker shot him down just the same. The civilians elected to Myanmar’s legislature are required to wear hats when taking the floor. The appointed military members are not.
NAYPYITAW, Myanmar (AP) — The non-military members of Myanmar’s Parliament must wear hats on the floor, a requirement that creates a window into the many cultures that make up the Southeast Asian country of 50 million. Here’s a look at seven members of Parliament and what their headgear says about them: ___
