HONG KONG (AP) — Hong Kong police removed some barricades on Tuesday from the edge of pro-democracy protest zones that have choked off roads for weeks, the second straight day they have taken such action and signaling their growing impatience with the student-led demonstrators. Dozens of police used electric saws and bolt cutters to dismantle the bamboo barriers that pro-democracy protesters had erected overnight after an angry mob led by a few dozen masked men tried to storm the barricades the day before.
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, smiling broadly and supporting himself with a cane, appeared Tuesday in state media for the first time in nearly six weeks, ending an absence that fed global speculation that something was amiss with the country’s most powerful person. The sudden resumption of the “field guidance” tours that had been a regular part of Kim’s public persona before he stopped showing up in media reports for 40 days allowed the country’s massive propaganda apparatus to continue doing what it does best — glorifying the third generation of Kim family rule. And it will tamp down, at least for the moment, rampant rumors of a coup and serious health problems.
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.
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: ___
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.
JAFFNA, Sri Lanka (AP) — Cheered by tens of thousands of people, a train decorated with banana plants and colorful flower garlands arrived in Sri Lanka’s northern Tamil heartland on Monday, 24 years after the “Queen of Jaffna” was suspended due to civil war. President Mahinda Rajapaksa bought a ticket and boarded the train for the last 43 kilometers (27 miles) of the journey and opened several railroad stations along the way.
BEIJING (AP) — A court in China’s western Xinjiang region has sentenced to death 12 people blamed for terrorist attacks that killed 37 people in July, state media reported Monday. Xinhua News Agency said the court in Kashgar prefecture sentenced another 15 people to death with a two-year reprieve, and nine people received life sentences. Xinhua said another 20 defendants received terms of four to 20 years.
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — A mountain ambush by Taliban fighters killed at least 14 Afghan security force troops, authorities said Monday, as villagers elsewhere in the country alleged a NATO airstrike that the coalition said targeted militants actually killed civilians. The fighting in Sari Pul province, as well as the disputed NATO airstrike in eastern Paktia province, show the serious challenges facing new Afghan President Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai. Former President Hamid Karzai repeatedly clashed with NATO forces over civilian casualties from airstrikes, straining relations as public anger against the coalition grew.
LONDON (AP) — The British government has summoned a senior Thai diplomat to express concern about the investigation into the killing of two British tourists in the Southeast Asian country. Foreign Office minister Hugo Swire says he told Charge d’Affaires Nadhavathna Krishnamra that inquiries into the deaths of Hannah Witheridge and David Miller should be “conducted in a fair and transparent way.” Swire said Monday it was vital the victims’ families were kept updated, and expressed “concern about the way that the police had engaged with the media on the case.”
KINGSTON, Jamaica (AP) — An official with a Chinese engineering firm says four people were ambushed and killed after leaving a company office in central Jamaica. Zhong Dong Tang is a regional director with China Harbour Engineering Company, which is working on a major highway project on the Caribbean island.
THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — The Dutch government says Ukrainian searchers have recovered belongings including passports, luggage, jewelry and children’s toys from the wreckage of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17. The Security and Justice Ministry said in a statement that 40 members of the Ukrainian disaster response agency participated in a new round of searching at the wreckage site in Eastern Ukraine Monday. Four Dutch officials and an OSCE team were also present.
In this photo by Aaron Favila, a man uses a mallet to extract steel bars from a concrete post so he can sell the steel to a junkshop. The seafront location in Tacloban city, central Philippines, is in front of an oil plant and near a ship that washed ashore and smashed into houses during Typhoon Haiyan last November. The region is still trying to recover from the devastation wrought by one of the strongest typhoons to make landfall, killing at least 6,300 people and displacing more than 4 million.
Muslims in India and elsewhere in Asia offered prayers and slaughtered sheep and goats to mark the festival of Eid al-Adha, or the Feast of the Sacrifice. The disputed region of Kashmir experienced its worst violence in years, as Indian and Pakistani forces traded mortar shells and gunfire, killing at least 19 people on both sides of the tense border. Each side blamed the other for starting the firing, which caused tens of thousands of people to flee their homes.
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea said Monday that the remains of American soldiers killed during the Korean War were being neglected and “carried away en masse,” in an apparent effort to pressure Washington to resume recovery efforts that could also lead to much-needed money for the impoverished country. The United States suspended efforts to recover the remains of thousands of U.S. soldiers who died during the Korean War because of the North’s plans to launch a long-range rocket in 2012. The U.S. at the time was just starting the process of resuming excavation work that had been suspended in 2005 when Washington said security arrangements for its personnel working in the North were insufficient. North Korea would have received millions of dollars in compensation for its support of the work.
