World Briefs

CHINA is “not aware of the situation” surrounding reports that the wife of the detained Chinese former president of Interpol has been threatened, a foreign ministry spokesman said yesterday. Lu Kang told reporters that it would be “natural” for Chinese consular officials to contact the wife of Meng Hongwei, who vanished after traveling to China late last month from France, where Interpol is headquartered.

TAIWAN President Tsai Ing-wen called on China yesterday not to be a “source of conflict” and pledged to boost the island’s defenses against Beijing’s military threats. In a National Day address, Tsai said the best way to defend Taiwan was to “make it indispensable and irreplaceable to the world,” while remaining non-confrontational in its attitude toward China. 

HONG KONG’s Securities and Futures Commission said it is preparing to charge 60 companies and individuals as investigations into what enforcement chief Tom Atkinson called “nefarious networks” come to a head. He spoke at the Refinitiv Pan Asian Regulatory Summit in Hong Kong yesterday.

VATICAN CITY The Vatican has confirmed that two Chinese bishops attending a major Vatican gathering for the first time will return home before delegates formulate their final conclusions for Pope Francis. The head of the Vatican’s communications office, Paolo Ruffini, said there was “no surprise” in the early departure of Bishops Guo Jincai and Yang Xiaoting from the Oct. 3-28 synod on young people. He said it was known the two had other commitments that would cut short their participation.

THAILAND The son of former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra was indicted on charges of money laundering, as pressure mounts on the ousted leader’s political allies. Panthongtae Shinawatra (pictured) was arraigned by prosecutors for allegedly laundering 10 million baht (USD303,500) linked to an earlier corruption case involving Krungthai Bank.

USA Google will begin offering its pay-to-carpool service throughout the U.S., an effort to reduce the commute-time congestion that its popular Waze navigation app is designed to avoid. The expansion builds upon a carpooling system that Waze began testing two years ago in northern California and Israel before gradually extending it into Brazil and parts of 12 other states. Now it will be available to anyone in the U.S.

UNITED NATIONS The U.N. office for disaster risk reduction said that worldwide reported economic losses from earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, floods, hurricanes and other climate-related disasters surged to total nearly USD2.9 trillion over the past 20 years.