APD | Weekly top 10 hot news (Mar.9 - March.15)
Every Saturday, Asia Pacific Daily will provide you with a run-down of the latest hot news.
This week, the following hot news you should know:
Top1 | New Zealand mosque shootings kill at least 49, seriously wound 20
At least one gunman killed 49 people and wounded more than 20 during Friday prayers at two New Zealand mosques in the country’s worst ever mass shooting, which Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern condemned as terrorism.
A gunman broadcast live footage on Facebook of the attack on one mosque in the city of Christchurch, mirroring the carnage played out in video games, after publishing a “manifesto” in which he denounced immigrants, calling them “invaders”.
Police said later three people were in custody and one man in his late 20s had been charged with murder. He will appear in court on Saturday.
Top 2 | DPRK considering suspending nuclear talks with U.S.: TASS
DPRK is considering suspending nuclear talks with the United States, Vice Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui said on Friday, according to Russia’s TASS news agency.
DPRK has no intention to yield to U.S. demands or engage in negotiations of this kind, Choe told a press conference in DPRK's capital Pyongyang, TASS reported.
DPRK leader Kim Jong Un is set to make an official announcement soon on his position regarding talks with United States, TASS reported, citing Choe.
Top 3 | Pompeo says all U.S. diplomats have left Venezuela
All U.S. diplomats remaining in Venezuela left the country on Thursday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said, amid a political crisis over the legitimacy of President Nicolas Maduro’s 2018 re-election.
“U.S. diplomats will now continue that mission from other locations where they will continue to help manage the flow of humanitarian assistance to the Venezuelan people and support the democratic actors bravely resisting tyranny,” Pompeo said in a statement.
The State Department had already announced that it would withdraw its remaining diplomatic staff from Venezuela this week.
Top 4 | All 157 people on board crashed Ethiopian plane confirmed dead
All 157 people on board the Ethiopian Airlines (ET) flight that crashed earlier Sunday are confirmed dead, Ethiopian state television reported.
All 149 passengers and eight crew members aboard ET 302, bound for Nairobi, Kenya, are confirmed killed, the Ethiopian Broadcasting Corporation (EBC) said.
The Boeing 737-800 MAX took off at 08:38 a.m. local time from Addis Ababa Bole International Airport and lost contact at 08:44 a.m., the airline said in a statement.
The plane crashed near Bishoftu city, about 45 km southeast of the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, the ET said in a statement.
Top 5 | Merkel dismisses U.S. threat over Huawei 5G network involvement
Following a warning letter by the U.S. ambassador in Berlin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Tuesday that it "goes without saying" that the German government would define its own security standards in its 5G expansion.
Merkel added that security in the expansion of Germany's 5G mobile network was a "precious asset" for the German government, and security standards would be discussed with Germany's partners in Europe and the United States.
U.S. ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell, had reportedly warned that intelligence cooperation between the United States and Germany could continue at its current level only if Chinese firms were excluded from the construction of Germany's 5G network, according to a letter sent to German economy minister Peter Altmaier.
Top 6 | US begins work on new cruise missile after pulling out of cold war treaty
The US has begun building parts for a new ground-launched cruise missile in anticipation of the end of a cold war treaty that banned them, the Pentagon has confirmed.
The Trump administration declared on 1 February it was no longer bound by the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty and would withdraw completely in August, pointing to the deployment of a new Russian missile which the US has complained for more than six years was a violation of the agreement.
It is the first time the US has built such weapons since the 1980s when cruise missiles were deployed in Europe in a tense standoff against Soviet SS-20 missiles.
Top 7 | Trump's ex-aide Manafort sentenced to new charges
U.S. President Donald Trump's former campaign chairman Paul Manafort was sentenced to about three and a half more years in prison and was hit with a fresh set of criminal charges in New York on Wednesday, drawing sympathy from a president who declined to say whether he would issue a pardon.
Manafort, 69, is due to spend a total of seven and a half years behind bars when the sentence by U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson for crimes related to secret lobbying and witness tampering is combined with another of just under four years issued by a different judge in Virginia last Thursday. He has already served nine months of the sentence.
The veteran Republican operative has received the longest prison term yet in Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation of possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia during the 2016 presidential election.
Top 8 | Iran's Rouhani arrives in Iraq on first official visit: state TV
Iran's President Hassan Rouhani arrived in Iraq on Monday for his first official visit, state television said, as Baghdad is under pressure from Washington to limit ties with its neighbour. His visit to Iraq is the first since he became president in 2013.
Before leaving Tehran Rouhani hailed the "special" relations between Iran and Iraq, saying they could not be compared to Baghdad's ties "with an aggressor country like America".
"Iran-Iraq relations are special," Rouhani said at Tehran's Mehrabad airport before flying to Baghdad, Iranian state television reported, adding that Tehran was always ready to help its neighbours.
Top 9 | Venezuelan congress declares 'national state of emergency' over blackout
Venezuela's opposition-run congress on Monday declared a "national state of emergency" over a five-day power blackout that has crippled the country's oil exports and left millions of citizens scrambling to find food and water.
Much of Venezuela remained without power on Monday, although electricity had largely returned to the capital city Caracas following an outage that began last Thursday.
The outage has added to discontent in the country already suffering from hyperinflation and a political crisis after U.S. President Donald Trump supported opposition leader Juan Guaido the "interim president" in January. Maduro was inaugurated as the president earlier in the same month.
Top 10 | UK wants orderly Brexit but default is to exit on March 29 - Lidington
Britain wants an orderly exit from the European Union but the legal default is still to leave on March 29 unless an alternative solution is put in place, Prime Minister Theresa May’s de-facto deputy said on Friday.
“I hope still we can leave as soon as possible in an orderly fashion but that depends upon parliamentary approval both in principle of a withdrawal agreement but also then the implementing legislation that has to follow before lawfully we can ratify that treaty,” David Lidington told BBC radio.
“By the end of March we have to have an alternative in place, not just a resolution of the House of Commons, a preference, but a solution in place that enables us to have an extension so there isn’t crash out on March 29.”
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(ASIA PACIFIC DAILY)
