Jimmy Lai’s lawyers appeal to UN over media mogul’s health
The Hong Kong government has condemned a team of international lawyers for raising the issue of media mogul Jimmy Lai’s deteriorating health in a maximum security prison with the United Nations, calling it “unreasonable smears”.
Lai’s international legal team and his son Sebastien Lai in an appeal to the UN Special Rapporteur said the circumstances under which the 76-year-old British citizen was kept in prolonged solitary confinement posed “a grave risk” to his physical and mental health and to his life.
Lai has been in detention since December 2020 as he is being tried in a delayed and gruelling national security trial on charges of sedition and collusion with foreign powers. Lai was first detained at Hong Kong’s maximum-security Stanley Prison but was transferred to the Lai Chi Kok Reception Centre at the beginning of the year.
The concerns were exacerbated after observers noted that the pro-democracy newspaper tycoon appeared “clearly trembling and feeling unwell” during a 3 June hearing on the delayed trial, the appeal said.
Detailing his health issues, his legal team said Lai appeared in court showing “significant loss of weight and increasing frailty” and he was seen shivering.
The lawyers alleged that Lai had been denied access to specialised medical care for his long-standing health concern of diabetes.
The legal team said a “lack of specialised medical care increases the risk of long-term complications linked to his diabetes due to the failure to properly manage his condition”.
“International law is clear: it is always unlawful for a prisoner to be subjected to torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, and States must protect prisoners from such treatment,” King’s Counsel Caoilfhionn Gallagher said.
His son urged the UN and the UK government to take immediate action to ensure his release “before it is too late”.
“My father has endured so much for standing up for his beliefs and for the people of Hong Kong. He has been imprisoned for over three and a half years and faces the risk of dying behind bars,” he said.
“Today, for the first time, we are filing an Urgent Appeal with the United Nations over my father’s appalling and inhumane prison conditions. His treatment by the authorities poses a very serious risk to his health and even to his life.”
The Hong Kong Free Press (HKFP) reported that the Hong Kong government did not directly address whether Lai was given specialist care while in detention.
In a statement, the government said it “strongly rejects unreasonable smears by external forces regarding treatment received by Lai”.
It said any accusation concerning Lai not receiving appropriate treatment in prison “cannot be further from the truth and is only spreading rumours to create trouble”.
A government spokesperson told HKFP that each jail cell was “of adequate size and designed to ensure proper lighting, ventilation, and fittings essential for maintaining health”.
On 12 August, a British judge upheld the conviction against Lai and six fellow accused for their role in the 2019 anti-government protests.
Lai, the founder of the now-shuttered Apple Daily newspaper, is facing the prospect of life in prison if found guilty of sedition and collusion with foreign powers under the city’s national security law.
He has pleaded not guilty on two charges of collusion with foreign forces and one count of conspiring to publish seditious material.
Lai is expected to testify when his trial resumes in November.
Parents say troop of monkeys saved their child from being raped
The parents of a six-year-old child in India say an attack by a troop of monkeys saved their daughter from being raped.
The girl escaped unharmed after an unknown stranger lured her into an abandoned house in Baghpat, Uttar Pradesh on Saturday, the family said.
Police have registered a case under child protection laws, though the assailant has not been identified. No arrests have yet been made.
The girl’s father told the Times of India that the man was captured on a surveillance camera leading the child into an abandoned house through the narrow lanes of the village. The man attempted to sexually assault her when a troop of monkeys aggressively charged towards him, forcing him to leave, the family say.
The girl escaped from the house and later described to her family how the “monkeys saved her”, the newspaper reported.
“My daughter was playing outside when the accused took her away,” the father said. “The man can be seen in nearby CCTV footage, walking in a narrow lane with my daughter.”
The girl told her parents that the man threatened to kill her father if she spoke to anyone about the incident.
“My daughter would have been dead by now if monkeys had not intervened,” the girl’s father said.
Harish Bhadioria, a local police officer, said they are investigating the incident “involving monkeys”.
A complaint has been registered under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, he said.
Police say they are still working to identify and track down the perpetrator.
Monkeys live alongside people in many parts of India due to the loss of their natural habitat, and some species – particularly rhesus macaques – are infamous for their occasionally aggressive behaviour towards humans when they feel threatened.
Many in the Hindu-majority country also revere and feed the animals they consider to be connected to the demigod Hanuman, who takes the form of a monkey. They are often found in large numbers outside temples where devotees offer them food.
Japanese jets fire warning flares at Russian plane for first time
Japanese fighter jets fired warning flares at a Russian reconnaissance plane after it repeatedly breached the neighbouring country’s airspace, Tokyo said, as tensions rise over Moscow’s increasing military cooperation with China in the region.
A Russian Il-38 military patrol plane entered Japanese airspace for up to a minute over three instances near the northernmost main island of Hokkaido, above Rebun Island, the defence ministry said.
The military scrambled an undisclosed number of F-15 and F-35 fighter jets which fired flares at the Russian aircraft after it apparently ignored their warnings, defence minister Minoru Kihara said.
“The airspace violation was extremely regrettable,” Mr Kihara said.
He said Japan “strongly protested” to Russia through diplomatic channels and demanded preventive measures.
“We will carry out our warning and surveillance operations as we pay close attention to their military activities,” he said, calling the use of flares a legitimate response to the alleged airspace violation.
“We plan to use it without hesitation,” he said.
The incident took place the same day as Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida met with Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky in New York and discussed Tokyo’s energy aid to Kyiv as its war against Russia grinds on into the third year.
“Restoring our energy supply after Russian shelling and preparing for winter are tasks we are actively working on now,” Mr Zelensky said in a post on the Telegram app.
“Together with prime minister Fumio Kishida, we discussed the situation in the energy sector.”
Japan is one of Ukraine’s strongest supporters in Asia, giving substantial material and financial support, including $4.5bn this year alone.
Japan has also provided Kyiv equipment for restoring and increasing the capacity of its electricity network to get through winter amid Russia‘s continued strikes on energy infrastructure.
Meanwhile, Japanese defence officials have voiced concerns over Russia and China stepping up military cooperation in the region, with Chinese warplanes engaging in assertive activity around Japanese waters.
These concerns have prompted Tokyo to significantly reinforce the defences of southwestern Japan, including remote islands that are considered key to Japan’s defence strategy in the region.
Earlier in September, another Russian military aircraft flew around southern Japanese airspace. It was after a Chinese Y-9 reconnaissance aircraft briefly violated Japan’s southern airspace in late August.
According to Japan’s military, it scrambled jets nearly 669 times between April 2023 and March 2024, about 70 per cent of the time against Chinese military aircraft, though these incidents did not include airspace violations.
Russia and Japan have been locked in a territorial dispute over islands near Hokkaido that were seized by the Soviet Union during the final days of World War II.
Moscow is yet to issue a response to Tokyo’s allegations.
Man admits to burying girlfriend in cement as 16-year cold case solved
Police in South Korea arrested a man who reportedly confessed to killing his girlfriend 16 years ago after her body was discovered in a suitcase encased in cement on his apartment balcony.
The man, now in his 50s, admitted to striking her with a blunt object during a heated argument in 2008 when they were living together in an apartment in the southern city of Geoje, police said.
After her death due to the trauma to her head, he buried her body in the suitcase under bricks and cement on the balcony, where it remained undetected for years, they said.
Fingerprint analysis confirmed that the body, preserved inside the suitcase, was the missing woman. An autopsy revealed she had died from blunt force trauma to the head.
“The body hadn’t completely decomposed to bones, allowing us to identify her using fingerprints,” the local police were quoted as saying by AFP.
The body was only discovered in the apartment, which the landlord had been using as a storage space, last month by a maintenance worker who was there for drilling to repair a rooftop balcony leak.
At the time of the woman’s disappearance, the man told the landlord they had broken up, and with no physical evidence or leads, the investigation went cold.
The unidentified man continued living in the apartment for eight more years until he was imprisoned on drug charges in 2017. Unable to clear out his belongings, the landlord left the unit vacant until a court-ordered eviction was completed in 2020.
The man also confessed to discarding her mobile phone and the murder weapon in the sea off the coast of Geoje, according to The Korea Times.
A police officer was quoted as saying by Hankook Ilbo: “The landlord, who lived elsewhere, used the room as a storage space. The concrete structure was located on a balcony separate from the rooftop room, making it difficult to notice from inside the room.”
The woman had lost contact with her own family and in 2011 when they visited Geoje, they reported her missing, three years after her murder.
After the discovery of the body, police swiftly identified the boyfriend as the prime suspect and arrested him on 19 September in the southeastern city of Yangsan, where he had been residing. The man is now in police custody and faces murder charges.
India confirms first case of mpox clade 1b that sparked global warning
The Indian health ministry confirmed the first case of the fast-spreading clade 1b mpox variant that triggered a public health emergency alert from the World Health Organisation (WHO).
A man who travelled from the United Arab Emirates to the southern Indian state of Kerala has been detected with the new variant, health ministry spokesperson Manisha Verma said.
The global health emergency has reached the world’s most populated nation after the deadly clade 1b variant was first identified in the Democratic Republic of Congo and began spreading to neighbouring African countries.
The WHO declared mpox – formerly known as monkeypox – a public health emergency in August as the highly contagious variant has killed at least 635 people in DR Congo this year.
The clade 1b strain of mpox was detected in a 38-year-old patient who was admitted to a government hospital in the Malappuram district of Kerala last week after reporting symptoms of fever and rashes, according to reports.
Around 55 people who have been identified as contacts of the patient are at a potential risk.
About 29 friends and family members as well as 37 co-passengers on his flight are being monitored at home for the symptoms of disease after being identified as his contacts. But none of them has shown any mpox symptoms so far, Malappuram district’s nodal officer, Dr Shubin C, told Reuters on Monday.
It comes days after the Indian health ministry clarified that its first new mpox case involved the older strain of the virus and not the deadlier one linked to the current global health emergency.
The mpox strain found in a young man from Haryana who had arrived from an affected country was not from the current outbreak but it was the clade 2 strain, it said.
India has reported about 30 cases and one death from the older strain, known as clade 2, between 2022 and March this year.
The government health agencies have been on alert and gearing up for the spread of the strain in the densely-populated country where many travel overseas in search of job opportunities. Many international airports such as Bengaluru have placed thermal scanners to boost vigilance.
The country has more than two dozen labs equipped to test mpox and has been ramping up sensitisation of health teams in vulnerable areas, the health ministry said in August.
Two strains of mpox spreading in Congo – the endemic form of the virus, clade 1, and the new clade 1b strain – have caused alarm across the globe.
Mpox transmits through close physical contact, including sexual contact, but unlike previous global pandemics such as Covid-19 there is no evidence it spreads easily through the air.
Meryl Streep says cats have more rights than women in Afghanistan
A female cat has more freedom in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan today than a woman, Meryl Streep said at the United Nations on Monday, stating that the world has been upended.
“Today in Kabul a female cat has more freedom than a woman. A cat may go sit on her front stoop and feel the sun on her face. She may chase a squirrel into the park. A squirrel has more rights than a girl in Afghanistan today, because the public parks have been closed to women and girls by the Taliban,” the Hollywood actor said.
She joined several prominent Afghan women activists at the event “The Inclusion of Women in the Future of Afghanistan” on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly (UNGA) in New York.
“A bird may sing in Kabul, but a girl may not and a woman may not in public. This is extraordinary. This is a suppression of the natural law. This is odd,” she said, referring to the Taliban’s latest edict for Afghan women, banning their voices and presence from public spaces.
Women in Afghanistan, nearly half the population, have been banned by the Taliban from attending high school, colleges and universities. It further restricts women from working in a horrific repeat of its 90s rule on the country.
Afghan women are not allowed to step outside their homes and need to be accompanied by a male guardian, father or husband (mehram) or face punishment by the local Taliban leaders. They are also prohibited from entering public parks, gymnasiums and salons, most of which have been shut down since August 2021 after the Taliban took control of power in Afghanistan.
“The way that … this society has been upended is a cautionary tale for the rest of the world,” Streep said, as she called on the international community to intervene on behalf of women to “stop the slow suffocation of entire half of the population”.
“I feel that the Taliban, since they have issued over 100 edicts in Afghanistan, stripping women and girls of their education and employment, their freedom of expression and movement, they have effectively incarcerated half their population,” she said.
The multi-award winning actor also called on the Sunni community nations to intervene as the Taliban claim to be a Sunni Islamist movement.
Streep also pointed out women comprised most of Afghanistan’s civil servants in the 1970s, before the nation plunged into wars over the next five decades.
The Taliban have outright rejected the foreign criticism of its harsh edicts on Afghan women, calling it an internal matter of Afghanistan. However the group is denied recognition by the international community, which has asked the Taliban leaders to restore the basic human rights of women.
The Taliban say they respect rights in line with their interpretation of Islamic Sharia law.
“Without educated women, without women in employment, including in leadership roles, and without recognising the rights and freedoms of one-half of its population, Afghanistan will never take its rightful place on the global stage,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said.
Viral Olympic shooter Kim Ye-ji lands first acting gig as assassin
South Korean pistol shooter Kim Ye-ji, who won both a silver medal and the internet at the Paris Olympics, is soon going to be on screens in a role everyone wanted to see her: an assassin.
Kim, 32, took over the internet the second she stepped onto the shooting range at the Olympics in August. Social media couldn’t stop gushing about her all-black style, quiet confidence, calm demeanor, the casual hand-in-pocket stance, and her overall “main character” energy.
Now, she is bringing that energy into playing an assassin in a new film titled Crush, a short-form series of the global film project Asia, produced by Seoul-based entertainment firm Asia Lab.
Asia, directed by Lee Jung-sub, follows the stories of individuals confronting racial hatred and discrimination, and stars different actors from Asian countries. Thai actor Pakorn Chatborrirak, Indian actor Anushka Sen, Malaysian actor Sean Lee, Malaysian singer Daiyan Trisha and Korean actor Jang Yoon-young all star in the film, which is still in production.
“Kim expressed that she is both nervous and thrilled as she takes her first acting role as a captivating assassin alongside world-renowned actors in the spin-off of Asia, a major global project by Asia Lab,” said You Min-guk, the CEO of Kim’s agency Plfil, according to the Korea JoongAng Daily.
“That the series will be a huge gift to fans around the world when it is soon released.”
Kim will be seen alongside Indian actor and influencer Sen, who is popular in South Korea. “The joint casting of Sen and Kim as assassins in the Asia spin-off series will mark a groundbreaking moment in paving the way for innovation and a new chapter in global short-form series,” said Asia Lab CEO and director Lee.
Kim won the silver medal in the women’s 10-metre air pistol competition at the Olympics and even caught the attention of Tesla CEO Elon Musk.
“She should be cast in an action movie. No acting required!” Musk posted on X at the time.
In August, Kim signed with South Korean talent agency Plfil to help her manage her newfound fame.
“Nearly 20 brands want to use her in advertisements and over 10 TV shows are interested in featuring her,” a Plfil spokesperson told the Korea Herald in August, adding that her athletic career remained her top priority.
Since going viral at the Olympics, Kim has been in a Louis Vuitton shoot for W Korea, a beauty campaign with Givenchy for Singles magazine, and appeared in a Vogue Korea magazine shoot as well.
Marxist political outsider takes oath as new Sri Lanka president
Anura Kumara Dissanayake, a Marxist-leaning politician and leader of the People’s Liberation Front – JVP or Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna – has been sworn in as Sri Lanka’s new president after winning the election with 42.31 per cent of the vote.
On Monday morning, he pledged to address the country’s complex challenges, restore public confidence in politics, and tackle corruption. Mr Dissanayake, 55, led the Marxist-leaning National People’s Power coalition and secured victory over opposition leader Sajith Premadasa and 36 other candidates in Saturday’s election.
He garnered 5,740,179 votes, while Mr Premadasa received 4,530,902 votes, and has pledged to work with other parties to turn around Sri Lanka’s severe economic troubles. “We have deeply understood that we are going to get a challenging country,” he said in a brief speech after assuming office on Monday. “We don’t believe that a government, a single party or an individual would be able to resolve this deep crisis.”
His victory follows a period of both political and fiscal turmoil that led to former president Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s resignation amid mass protests in 2022. Mr Rajapaksa fled the country and was replaced by his prime minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, who also ran in Saturday’s election but finished a distant third.
Mr Dissanayake’s meteoric rise from securing only 3 per cent of the vote in 2019 elevates his half-century-old leftist JVP party to an unprecedented role in the political landscape of Sri Lanka, which has been completely reshaped by grassroots protests over the past two years.
He was first elected to the parliament in 2000 and briefly served as the agriculture and irrigation minister under the then president Chandrika Kumaratunga. He ran for president for the first time in 2019 but lost to Mr Rajapaksa.
“The people have placed their trust in me and my political movement,” Mr Dissanayake said on Sunday evening after he was officially declared the winner by the country’s election commission. “Everyone – those who voted and didn’t vote for me – we have a responsibility to take this country forward.”
This election marked the first time in Sri Lanka’s history that a presidential race required a second round of counting, as none of the candidates achieved the necessary 50 per cent of votes.
In Sri Lanka’s ranked-choice election system, voters can either select one candidate or list up to three candidates in order of preference. If no candidate receives 50 per cent or more of the votes, a second round of counting takes into account the preferences of voters whose first choice did not make it to the top two.
In his victory speech, Mr Dissanayake called for unity among all Sri Lankans, including the Sinhalese, Tamils, and Muslim communities, stating that a “new renaissance will rise from this shared strength and vision”.
“The dream we have nurtured for centuries is finally coming true. This achievement is not the result of any single person’s work but the collective effort of hundreds of thousands of you. Your commitment has brought us this far, and for that, I am deeply grateful. This victory belongs to all of us,” he said in a post on X.
“I will do my best to fully restore the people’s confidence in politicians,” Mr Dissanayake said after taking his oath.
“I am not a conjurer, I am not a magician,” he added. “There are things I know and things I don’t know, but I will seek the best advice and do my best. For that, I need the support of everyone.”
Alan Keenan of International Crisis Group told Al Jazeera that Mr Dissanayake – “a charismatic campaigner and speaker” – tapped into the concerns of Sri Lankan voters with his anti-corruption and pro-working-class campaign.
“He is fighting for a system change. That’s a very high bar, [there are] high expectations from a lot of supporters,” he said.
Experts said Mr Dissanayake’s presidency will need to address two key voids in Sri Lanka’s politics – the loss of faith in the Rajapaksa family, which dominated the leadership for about 15 years, and the gap in centre-left politics left by the Rajapaksas’ shift toward the right.
Mr Dissanayake has previously said he considers Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara one of his heroes. He positioned his National People’s Power coalition, led by JVP, as the best choice to address public demands for reforming Sri Lanka’s political patronage and corruption. He introduced new leaders, emphasised outreach to women affected by the economic crisis, and moderated his party’s previously radical Marxist messaging.
His messaging appears to have resonated with voters. “I’m voting for the Compass this time,” Saman Ratnasiri, 49, an auto-rickshaw driver in Colombo told The New York Times, referring to the election symbol of Mr Dissanayake’s coalition. He said he had never voted for Mr Dissanayake before but wanted to give him a chance. “If we don’t get it right this time also, then I might as well forget about this country.”
In the early 1990s, while at university, Mr Dissanyake became politically active and joined the JVP party – known for its armed uprisings in 1971 and 1987-89. The JVP, which represented the oppressed rural Sinhalese youth, sought to overthrow what it saw as exploitative and feudalistic political and economic systems through a hardline Marxist ideology.
Perhaps the first item in Mr Dissanayake’s in-tray will be what to do with the country’s bailout deal. He has criticised policies of austerity under Mr Wickremesinghe and has said he is committed to ongoing negotiations with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), vowing to pursue changes that will benefit the country while upholding existing financial agreements. It is unclear how he will marry the two – and the next instalment of the country’s $3bn IMF loan depends on Sri Lanka’s continued compliance with its terms.