World briefs

CHINA-MONACO Chinese President Xi Jinping has found one country in Europe that isn’t worried about China’s growing global clout or its ambitions to dominate the future of technology: Monaco.

TAIWAN For officials in Beijing looking for a Taiwanese presidential candidate who improves the island’s fraught ties with the mainland, Han Kuo-yu (pictured) is saying all the right things. The question is whether he runs. 

USA Vice President Pence is claiming that special counsel Robert Mueller has delivered “total vindication” of President Trump. Pence said that despite the two-year Russia investigation and “reckless accusations” Mueller confirmed “there was no collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia during the 2016 election.”

NORTH KOREA Swedish diplomats are keeping a room ready for the U.S. to use if it ever decides to have an official presence in the North Korean capital. The unmarked, slightly musty room next to the Swedish ambassador’s office in Pyongyang’s diplomatic quarter has been kept in an odd state of limbo for years.

INDONESIA Police said yesterday they found geckos and chameleons in the luggage of a Russian tourist who was arrested for allegedly trying to smuggle a drugged orangutan out of Bali. Andrei Zhestkov was detained late Friday at Bali’s international airport after security officers found a 2-year-old endangered male orangutan sleeping in a rattan basket in his luggage.

NFL Look out for Gronk gone wild. Without football strings attached, Patriot’s Rob Gronkowski (87) is suddenly a hot free agent year-round, his talents pitched to far more than 32 suitors, from Hollywood to endorsements to, well, whatever Gronk wants.

EGG BOY An Australian teen known around the world as “Egg Boy” conceded yesterday that egging a far-right senator was not the right thing to do, but said the gesture united a world reeling from a white supremacist’s alleged massacre of 50 Muslims in New Zealand. Will Connolly, 17, gave his first television interview since becoming an online hero among many for cracking an egg on Sen. Fraser Anning’s head.