News in Brief
BEIJING (TASS) -- The Chinese authorities are seeking jointly with Russia to protect the UN prestige and international law, China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi said on Sunday. "Our countries have become an example of how to pursue equitable and just policy. We are jointly safeguarding multilateral formats of cooperation,” China’s top diplomat said at a press conference held in Beijing during the sessions of the country’s highest legislative and consultative bodies. "China and Russia will be jointly protecting the UN prestige and safeguarding international law norms,” China’s top diplomat stressed. Beijing seeks to strengthen all-embracing partnership relations with Moscow, he said. "We take into account the historical experience and, what’s more, this is necessary in the conditions of the contemporary epoch,” he said.
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BEIJING (Reuters) -- China is at least 30 years away from becoming a manufacturing nation of "great power”, a former industry minister said on Sunday, despite boasting the world’s most complete industrial supply chains. In recent years, China has become the world’s top manufacturing nation, accounting for over a third of global output, driven by domestic demand to produce everything from motor vehicles to industrial machinery. But its industries’ heavy dependence on U.S. high-tech products such as semiconductors constituted a strategic weakness. "Basic capabilities are still weak, core technologies are in the hands of others, and the risk of ‘being hit in the throat’ and having ‘a slipped bike chain’ has significantly increased,” said Miao Wei, who was Minister of Industry and Information Technology for a decade before stepping down last year. As the Chinese economy pivots towards a services-based model and polluting smoke-stack factories are mothballed, manufacturing output as a share of the economy has declined.
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NAYPYITTAW (Reuters) -- An official from the party of deposed Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi died overnight in police custody, associates said Sunday, while security forces cracked down on demonstrators staging some of the most widespread protests against last month’s coup. The cause of Khin Maung Latt’s death was not known, but Reuters saw a photograph of his body with a bloodstained cloth around the head. Sithu Maung, a member of the dissolved parliament, said in a Facebook post that Khin Maung Latt was his campaign manager and was arrested on Saturday night in the Pabedan district of Yangon. Police fired stun grenades and tear gas to break up a sit-in protest by tens of thousands of people in Mandalay, the Myanmar Now media group said. At least 70 people were arrested. Earlier, troops occupied a university in the city after firing rubber bullets at people there, it said. Two people were injured.
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SEOUL (Reuters) -- South Korea and the United States will conduct its springtime military exercise this week, but the joint drill will be smaller than usual because of the coronavirus pandemic, Seoul said on Sunday. The allies will begin a nine day "computer-simulated command post exercise” on Monday, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement. South Korea and the United States decided to move forward with the drills after "comprehensively taking into consideration the COVID-19 situation, the maintenance of the combat readiness posture, the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and the establishment of peace,” the JCS said, noting that the exercise is "defensive” in nature. The drills will not include outdoor maneuvers, which have been carried out throughout the year, and the number of troops and equipment will be minimized due to the pandemic, Yonhap news agency reported.
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ASUNCION (AFP) -- Paraguay’s President Mario Abdo Benitez announced a cabinet reshuffle after violent street protests over the government’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic. He announced new people would be appointed to the ministries of health, education, women’s issues, and civil affairs. "I am sure that the men and women named will do their utmost to confront this moment of crisis that the country is enduring,” the president said. Thousands of protestors clashed with police late Friday, ransacking shops and setting cars on fire. A total of 21 people were injured, hospital officials said. Paraguayans are angry over a shortage of personal protective gear and other equipment to confront the health crisis and a collapse in the healthcare system. The health minister already resigned Friday.
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SRINAGAR (Reuters) -- Indian police have detained more than 150 Rohingya refugees found living illegally in the northern region of Jammu and Kashmir and a process has begun to deport them back to Myanmar, two officials said on Sunday. Dozens of Rohingya are in a makeshift "holding centre” at Jammu’s Hira Nagar jail after local authorities conducted biometric and other tests on hundreds of people to verify their identities. "The drive is part of an exercise to trace foreigners living in Jammu without valid documents,” said one of the two officials, who declined to be named as they are not authorized to speak to the media. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s federal government scrapped Jammu and Kashmir’s special status in August 2019 and now administers the region from New Delhi.
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BEIJING (Reuters) -- China is at least 30 years away from becoming a manufacturing nation of "great power”, a former industry minister said on Sunday, despite boasting the world’s most complete industrial supply chains. In recent years, China has become the world’s top manufacturing nation, accounting for over a third of global output, driven by domestic demand to produce everything from motor vehicles to industrial machinery. But its industries’ heavy dependence on U.S. high-tech products such as semiconductors constituted a strategic weakness. "Basic capabilities are still weak, core technologies are in the hands of others, and the risk of ‘being hit in the throat’ and having ‘a slipped bike chain’ has significantly increased,” said Miao Wei, who was Minister of Industry and Information Technology for a decade before stepping down last year. As the Chinese economy pivots towards a services-based model and polluting smoke-stack factories are mothballed, manufacturing output as a share of the economy has declined.
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NAYPYITTAW (Reuters) -- An official from the party of deposed Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi died overnight in police custody, associates said Sunday, while security forces cracked down on demonstrators staging some of the most widespread protests against last month’s coup. The cause of Khin Maung Latt’s death was not known, but Reuters saw a photograph of his body with a bloodstained cloth around the head. Sithu Maung, a member of the dissolved parliament, said in a Facebook post that Khin Maung Latt was his campaign manager and was arrested on Saturday night in the Pabedan district of Yangon. Police fired stun grenades and tear gas to break up a sit-in protest by tens of thousands of people in Mandalay, the Myanmar Now media group said. At least 70 people were arrested. Earlier, troops occupied a university in the city after firing rubber bullets at people there, it said. Two people were injured.
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SEOUL (Reuters) -- South Korea and the United States will conduct its springtime military exercise this week, but the joint drill will be smaller than usual because of the coronavirus pandemic, Seoul said on Sunday. The allies will begin a nine day "computer-simulated command post exercise” on Monday, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement. South Korea and the United States decided to move forward with the drills after "comprehensively taking into consideration the COVID-19 situation, the maintenance of the combat readiness posture, the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and the establishment of peace,” the JCS said, noting that the exercise is "defensive” in nature. The drills will not include outdoor maneuvers, which have been carried out throughout the year, and the number of troops and equipment will be minimized due to the pandemic, Yonhap news agency reported.
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ASUNCION (AFP) -- Paraguay’s President Mario Abdo Benitez announced a cabinet reshuffle after violent street protests over the government’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic. He announced new people would be appointed to the ministries of health, education, women’s issues, and civil affairs. "I am sure that the men and women named will do their utmost to confront this moment of crisis that the country is enduring,” the president said. Thousands of protestors clashed with police late Friday, ransacking shops and setting cars on fire. A total of 21 people were injured, hospital officials said. Paraguayans are angry over a shortage of personal protective gear and other equipment to confront the health crisis and a collapse in the healthcare system. The health minister already resigned Friday.
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SRINAGAR (Reuters) -- Indian police have detained more than 150 Rohingya refugees found living illegally in the northern region of Jammu and Kashmir and a process has begun to deport them back to Myanmar, two officials said on Sunday. Dozens of Rohingya are in a makeshift "holding centre” at Jammu’s Hira Nagar jail after local authorities conducted biometric and other tests on hundreds of people to verify their identities. "The drive is part of an exercise to trace foreigners living in Jammu without valid documents,” said one of the two officials, who declined to be named as they are not authorized to speak to the media. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s federal government scrapped Jammu and Kashmir’s special status in August 2019 and now administers the region from New Delhi.