Top Asian News 3:35 a.m. GMT
TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — Ukraine, trade and investment are expected to dominate Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s first trip to Europe in five years, as the Asian giant rebuilds its foreign relations after a prolonged absence during the Covid-19 pandemic. Xi will start the tour in Paris on Monday, meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron, who has been stressing the idea of European strategic autonomy from the U.S. On a visit to Beijing last year, Macron courted controversy by saying France would not necessarily always align with the U.S. in foreign policy, an apparent reference to American support for the self-governing republic of Taiwan, which China claims as its own territory to be annexed by force if necessary.
TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — China on Friday launched a lunar probe to land on the far side of the moon and return with samples that could provide insights into differences between the less-explored region and the better-known near side. It is the latest advance in China’s increasingly sophisticated space exploration program, which is now competing with the U.S., still the leader in space. China also has a three-member crew on its own orbiting space station and aims to put astronauts on the moon by 2030. Three Chinese lunar probe missions are planned over the next four years. Free from exposure to Earth and other interference, the moon’s somewhat mysterious far side is ideal for radio astronomy and other scientific work.
JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — A flood and a landslide hit Indonesia’s Sulawesi island, killing 14 people, officials said Saturday. Torrential rain pounding the area since Thursday triggered a landslide in Luwu district in South Sulawesi province, said local rescue chief Mexianus Bekabel. Floods up to 3 meters (10 feet) have affected 13 sub-districts as water and mud covered the area. More than 1,000 houses were affected, with 42 of them swept off their foundations. A search and rescue team worked to evacuate residents using rubber boats and other vehicles. More than 100 residents have been moved to mosques or relatives’ houses outside the affected area, National Disaster Management Agency spokesperson Abdul Muhari said Saturday.
CHENGDU, China (AP) — In 2018, the censors who oversee Chinese media issued a directive to the nation’s entertainment industry: Don’t feature artists with tattoos and those who represent hip-hop or any other subculture. Right after that well-known rapper GAI missed a gig on a popular singing competition despite a successful first appearance. Speculation went wild: Fans worried that this was the end for hip-hop in China. Some media labeled it a ban. The genre had just experienced a banner year, with a hit competition-format TV show minting new stars and introducing them to a country of 1.4 billion people. Rappers accustomed to operating on little money and performing in small bars became household names.
SAO PAULO (AP) — Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on Friday welcomed Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on his first visit to the country, with the two meeting in the capital of Brasilia and the South American leader pushing his counterpart to buy his country’s beef. Brazil had wished to seize on the bilateral meeting to push forward an agreement to open Japanese markets to Brazilian beef, a goal the Latin American country has pursued since 2005. In an appeal to the prime minister, Lula insisted he should eat at a steakhouse during his trip. “I don’t know what you had for dinner last night,” Lula said during the press conference, looking at Kishida and the Japanese delegation, then turning his attention to Vice President Geraldo Alckmin, who is also Minister of Industry, Commerce, Development and Trade.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia (AP) — Canadian police said they arrested three suspects Friday in the slaying of a Sikh separatist leader last June that become the center of a diplomatic spat with India, and are investigating possible ties between the detainees and the Indian government. Three Indian nationals in their 20s identified as Kamalpreet Singh, Karan Brar and Karampreet Singh were arrested in Edmonton, Alberta on Friday morning in the slaying of 45-year-old Hardeep Singh Nijjar by masked gunmen outside Vancouver, police said. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau sparked a diplomatic feud with India in September when he said that there were “credible allegations” of Indian involvement in the slaying of Nijjar.
MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexican forensic examiners were at a remote site in Baja California on Friday where three bodies were reportedly found, in the same area where two Australians and an American went missing last weekend. An employee of the state prosecutors’ office who was not authorized to be quoted by name said Friday that examiners and emergency workers were trying to recover evidence found at the scene. But the employee would not say what that evidence was. The site is near the township of Santo Tomás, south of Ensenada. That is the area where local media reported three bodies had been found.
TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — For the first time, China has publicized what it claims is an unwritten 2016 agreement with the Philippines over access to South China Sea islands. The move threatens to further raise tensions in the disputed waterway, through which much of the world’s trade passes and which China claims virtually in its entirety. A statement from the Chinese Embassy in Manila said the “temporary special arrangement” agreed to during a visit to Beijing by former president Rodrigo Duterte allowed small scale fishing around the islands but restricted access by military, coast guard and other official planes and ships to the 12 nautical mile (22 kilometer) limit of territorial waters.
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden has called Japan and India “xenophobic” countries that do not welcome immigrants, lumping the two with adversaries China and Russia as he tried to explain their economic circumstances and contrasted the four with the U.S. on immigration. The remarks, at a campaign fundraising event Wednesday evening, came just three weeks after the White House hosted Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida for a lavish official visit, during which the two leaders celebrated what Biden called an “unbreakable alliance,” particularly on global security matters. The White House welcomed Indian Prime Minister Narenda Modi for a state visit last summer.
HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam (AP) — Dam Chan Nguyen saves dead and dying computers. When he first started working two decades ago in Nhat Tao market, Ho Chi Minh City’s biggest informal recycling market, he usually salvaged computers with bulky monitors and heavy processors. Now he works mostly with laptops and the occasional MacBook. But the central tenet of his work hasn’t changed: Nothing goes to waste. What can be fixed is fixed. What can be salvaged gets re-used elsewhere. What’s left is sold as scrap. “We utilize everything possible,” he said. The shop he works at is one of many in a market that spreads across several streets filled with haggling customers.