HONG KONG will hold by-elections in March next year to replace four lawmakers that were disqualified from the legislature over the controversial manner in which they took their oaths of office. Beijing handed down an unprecedented legal interpretation of the Basic Law in late-2016, which prompted authorities to swiftly dismiss the lawmakers. By-elections will be held for Hong Kong Island, Kowloon West, New Territories East and a functional constituency.
CHINA At least nine people have been killed and nine others trapped in mining and tunnel building accidents in China, state media reported yesterday.
MALAYSIA A fire that blocked the only exit to an Islamic school dormitory killed 23 people, mostly teenagers, on the outskirts of Malaysia’s largest city yesterday, officials said. A government official said a wall separating the victims from a second exit “shouldn’t have been there.”
JAPAN-INDIA India and Japan launched work on a high-speed train line in the western Indian state of Gujarat yesterday during a visit by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. The “bullet train” will link Ahmadabad, the main commercial city in Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s native state, to India’s financial capital of Mumbai.
AUSTRALIA An Australian senator who a month ago provoked an angry backlash by wearing a burqa in Parliament urged lawmakers yesterday to ban full-face Islamic coverings in public places.
RUSSIA Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are watching with concern the latest round of Russian military drills that some analysts think might be the largest of their kind since the Cold War.
AFGHANISTAN A Finnish woman who had been kidnapped in Afghanistan was released yesterday and is safe, officials said. Finnish foreign minister Timo Soini told a news conference that Finland did not pay ransom “and never would.”
ITALY-GREECE The prime ministers of Greece and Italy have stressed that European countries should share the burden of dealing with migration, rather than establish “fences and exclusions that undermine our European values.”
URUGUAI Lucia Topolansky, the wife of former President Jose Mujica and a former guerrilla who was imprisoned and later rose through the political ranks to become a lawmaker, has been appointed Uruguay’s vice president. She will also head the Senate and the congress’ general assembly.
BRAZIL’s top court has authorized a new corruption and money laundering investigation of President Michel Temer in yet another case that raises the possibility of his suspension from office.
