NEW DELHI — India has condemned comments made by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei on the treatment of Muslims in the South Asian nation, calling his remarks “misinformed and unacceptable.”

“We cannot consider ourselves to be Muslims if we are oblivious to the suffering that a Muslim is enduring in Myanmar, Gaza, India, or any other place,” Khamenei said in a social media post on Monday.

In response, India’s foreign ministry said it “strongly deplored” the comments.

“Countries commenting on minorities are advised to look at their own record before making any observations about others,” the foreign ministry spokesperson said.

The two countries have typically shared a strong relationship, and signed a 10-year contract in May to develop and operate the Iranian port of Chabahar.

India has been developing the port in Chabahar on Iran’s southeastern coast along the Gulf of Oman as a way to transport goods to Iran, Afghanistan and central Asian countries, bypassing the ports of Karachi and Gwadar in its rival Pakistan.

Khamenei, however, has been critical of India in the past over issues involving Indian Muslims and the troubled Muslim-majority region of Kashmir.
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Nadia Mirza is a well-known journalist in Pakistan. But her high-profile status is no protection from online trolls who threaten her and target her appearance and competence. Analysts say the treatment of women in media is a global issue. For Tabinda Naeem, Elizabeth Cherneff has the story for VOA News.
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ISLAMABAD — A new report finds Pakistan’s blasphemy laws are being significantly misused, with many defendants facing baseless accusations, protracted legal battles and lengthy pre-trial prison time as judges tread carefully to avoid offending religious groups.  

The U.S.-based Clooney Foundation for Justice (CFJ) on Monday released its findings after monitoring 24 blasphemy lawsuits for six months during 2022 in Lahore, the capital of Pakistan’s most populous province, Punjab. 

The CJF said 15 of the accused are facing mandatory death sentences if convicted. However, the report said its monitors had noted little progress in most cases, with 217 out of 252 hearings adjourned, leaving many defendants stuck in pre-trial detention. 

“This report shows a process fraught with significant delays and unfairness, exacerbating the widespread climate of misuse, discrimination, and intimidation that has developed around Pakistan’s blasphemy law,” said Zimran Samuel, a CFJ legal expert and visiting professor in practice at the London School of Economics.  

“Pakistan’s blasphemy provisions in their current form and as they are being implemented are in urgent need of reform and reconsideration,” Samuel said.  

Making derogatory remarks against Islam or the Prophet Muhammad in Muslim-majority Pakistan is punishable by death under the country’s blasphemy laws, though no one has ever been executed under the laws. 

The CFJ’s report criticized the country’s blasphemy laws for being inconsistent with international standards, especially the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).  

The study noted that many blasphemy accusations lack evidence, with complainants often not witnessing the alleged acts. In some cases, it added that the specific blasphemous words are not even identified.  

Despite safeguards in place, such as the requirement for government approval of charges, these are often disregarded, the report alleged.  

The CFJ stated that defendants are often arrested without warrants, denied bail, and subjected to repeated adjournments due to missing witnesses, prolonging their legal ordeals. It called for Pakistan to repeal its blasphemy laws, raise the standards for filing allegations, deter false accusations, and reform court procedures to prevent endless delays. 

“The judicial system in Pakistan has completely failed in preventing the abuse and malafide (bad faith) use of the blasphemy laws in Pakistan,” the report quoted Hina Jilani, a leading human rights lawyer and activist in Pakistan. 

“While there are concerns regarding the laws as they are currently framed, the way that courts disregard the few procedural safeguards that were added to the legal framework has rendered prosecution in such cases farcical and an epitome of injustice,” stated Jilani, a recipient of the American Society of International Law award.  

The report highlighted that some cases do not even go to trial, with mob violence against those accused of blasphemy on the rise.  

Pakistani officials did not immediately respond to the CFJ findings, which came ahead of the United Nations Human Rights Committee’s review of the country, scheduled for October 17.  

Islamabad has consistently rejected foreign criticism of its blasphemy laws, calling it an internal matter for Pakistan to deal with. 

The report came just days after a police officer in the southwestern province of Balochistan shot and killed a man who was being held in custody on blasphemy allegations. The victim, a Muslim, was arrested a day earlier for allegedly making derogatory remarks about the Prophet Muhammad.  

In June, a 73-year-old Pakistani man from the minority Christian community died in a hospital a week after being violently attacked by a mob in his native Sargodha district in Punjab following accusations he insulted Islam.  

Days later, on June 20, a Muslim man from Punjab was visiting the scenic Swat Valley in the northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa when a mob violently lynched him for allegedly desecrating Islam’s holy book, the Quran. 

Hundreds of suspects, mostly Muslims, are languishing in jails in Pakistan because fear of retaliation from religious groups deters judges from moving their trials forward. 

The CFJ report backed long-running local and international rights groups’ concerns that the strict blasphemy laws are often misused to settle personal vendettas or to persecute Pakistani minority communities.  

The organization says its CFJ legal experts are tasked to monitor criminal trials globally against those who are most vulnerable, particularly journalists, democracy defenders, women and girls, LGBTQ+ persons, and minorities. 
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Hanoi — Typhoon Yagi caused $1.6 billion in economic losses in Vietnam, state media said Monday, as the UN’s World Food Program said the deadly floods it triggered in Myanmar were the worst in the country’s recent history.

Yagi battered Myanmar, Vietnam, Laos and Thailand with powerful winds and a huge dump of rain more than a week ago, triggering floods and landslides that have killed more than 400 people, according to official figures.

It tore across Vietnam’s densely populated Red River delta — a vital agricultural region that is also home to major manufacturing hubs — damaging factories and infrastructure, and inundating farmland.

The typhoon caused an estimated $1.6 billion in economic losses, state media reported, citing an initial government assessment.

The death toll in Vietnam stands at 292, with 38 missing, more than 230,000 homes damaged and 280,000 hectares of crops destroyed, according to authorities.

In Myanmar, the ruling junta has reported 113 fatalities and said that more than 320,000 people have been forced from their homes into temporary relief camps.

“Super Typhoon Yagi has affected most of the country and caused the worst floods we have seen in Myanmar’s recent history,” Sheela Matthew, WFP’s representative in Myanmar, said in a statement, without giving precise details.

Exact details of the impact on agriculture were not yet clear, she said.

“But I can say for sure that the impact on food security will be nothing less than devastating,” Matthew said.

Severe flooding hit Myanmar in 2011 and 2015, with more than 100 deaths reported on both occasions, while in 2008 Cyclone Nargis left more than 138,000 people dead or missing.

The latest crisis has prompted the junta to issue a rare appeal for foreign aid, with neighbor India responding with 10 tons of materials, including dry rations, clothing and medicine.

Myanmar’s military has blocked or frustrated humanitarian assistance from abroad in the past, including after powerful Cyclone Mocha last year when it suspended travel authorizations for aid groups trying to reach around a million people.

Even before the latest floods, people in Myanmar were already grappling with the effects of three years of war between the junta and armed groups opposed to its rule, with millions forced from their homes by the conflict.
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Osaka, Japan — Japan celebrated on Monday the record-breaking Emmy Awards triumph of “Shogun”, although many confessed not having watched the series about the country’s warring dynasties in the feudal era.  

“Shogun” smashed all-time records at the television awards in Los Angeles on Sunday, taking home an astounding 18 statuettes and becoming the first non-English-language winner of the highly coveted award for best drama series.  

Lead Hiroyuki Sanada, who played Lord Toranaga, became the first Japanese actor to win an Emmy, while Anna Sawai achieved the same for her performance as Lady Mariko.  

“As a Japanese, I’m happy Sanada won,” Kiyoko Kanda, a 70-year-old pensioner, told AFP in Tokyo.   

“He worked so hard since he moved to Los Angeles,” she said.  

“In ‘Last Samurai’, Tom Cruise was the lead, but it’s exciting Sanada is the main character in ‘Shogun’,” Kanda added.  

But she admitted that she only watched the trailer.  

The series is available only on Disney’s streaming platform, which is relatively new in Japan.  

“I want to watch it. I’m curious to know how Japan is portrayed,” Kanda said.  

Otsuka, who declined to give her first name, said she, too, has not watched the show.   

“But I saw the news and I’m happy he won.” Sanada, now 63, began his acting career at the age of five in Tokyo and moved to LA after appearing in “Last Samurai” in 2003.   

The words “historic achievements” and “Hiroyuki Sanada” were trending on X in Japanese, while Sanada’s speech at the awards racked up tens of thousands of views.  

Yusuke Takizawa, 41, also only watched a trailer but he said he was amazed by the quality of the show.  

“I was impressed by the high-spirited acting, the attention to detail and the film technology,” Takizawa told AFP outside Osaka Castle, a major historical location for the series.  

“I think many young people will want to try their hand in Hollywood after watching Sanada,” he said.  

Tourists at the castle also welcomed the record Emmy win.   

“I think was the best TV show that I’ve seen this year,” said Zara Ferjani, a visitor from London.   

“I thought it was amazing… The direction was beautiful, and I really enjoyed watching something that wasn’t in English as well,” the 33-year-old said.  

She said she had planned to watch “Shogun” after returning home from Japan.  

“But one of my friends strongly advised me to watch it beforehand, just to appreciate the culture more and definitely Osaka Castle more,” she added.  

• Breaking from cliches – 

Many in the Japanese film industry were also jubilant.   

“He won after many years of trying hard in Hollywood. It’s too cool,” wrote Shinichiro Ueda, director of the hit low-budget film “One Cut of the Dead”, on X.  

Video game creator and movie fan Hideo Kojima, who has described the show as “Game of Thrones in 17th-century Japan”, reposted a news story on the win.  

The drama, adapted from a popular novel by James Clavell and filmed in Canada, tells the tale of Lord Toranaga, who fights for his life against his enemies alongside Mariko and British sailor John Blackthorne.   

A previous TV adaptation made in 1980 was centered on Blackthorne’s perspective.  

But the new “Shogun” breaks away from decades of cliched and often bungled depictions of Japan in Western cinema, with Japanese spoken throughout most of the show.  

Sanada, who also co-produced the drama, is credited with bringing a new level of cultural and historical authenticity to “Shogun.”   

An army of experts, including several wig technicians from Japan, worked behind the scenes to make the series realistic, poring over sets, costumes and the actors’ movements. 
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CHENNAI, India — Police on Monday detained 104 striking workers protesting low wages at a Samsung Electronics plant in southern India as they were planning a protest march without permission, with the dispute disrupting output at the key factory for the past week.

The detention marks an escalation of a strike by workers at a Samsung home appliance plant near Chennai in the state of Tamil Nadu. Workers want higher wages and have stopped work at the plant that contributes roughly a third of Samsung’s annual India revenue of $12 billion.

The Samsung protests have cast a shadow on Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s plan of courting foreign investors to “Make in India” and his goal of tripling electronics production to $500 billion within six years.

Lured by cheap labor, foreign companies are increasingly using India for manufacturing to diversify their supply chain beyond China.

On Monday, the workers planned to start a protest march, but were detained as no permission was given since there are schools, colleges and hospitals in that area, said senior police officer of the Kancheepuram district K. Shanmugam.

“It is the main area which would become totally paralyzed and [the protest would] disturb public peace,” he said.

“We have detained them in wedding halls as all of them can’t be in stations,” he said.

Samsung workers since last week have been protesting at a makeshift tent near the plant, demanding higher wages, recognition for a union backed by influential labor group the Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU), and better working hours.

Samsung is not keen to recognize any union backed by a national labor group such as the CITU, and talks with workers, as well as state government officials, have not yielded resolution.

The CITU Tamil Nadu Deputy General Secretary, S. Kannan, condemned the police action, saying “This is an archaic move by the state government.”

Despite Monday’s police action, 12 union groups, including one affiliated with the ruling party of Tamil Nadu, said in a public notice dated Sept. 11 that they will stage a protest in support of the striking workers in Chennai on Wednesday, a move that could intensify the tensions between the company and the workers.

“We are going ahead with Wednesday’s protest … no changes to the plan,” said A. Jenitan, a deputy district secretary for the CITU.

The protests add to Samsung’s challenges in India, a key growth market.

The South Korean company is planning job cuts of up to 30% of its overseas staff in some divisions, including in India. And India’s antitrust body has found Samsung and other smartphone companies colluded with e-commerce giants to launch devices exclusively, violating competition laws, Reuters has reported.

Samsung did not respond to a request for comment on Monday, but on Friday said it has initiated discussions with workers at the Chennai plant “to resolve all issues at the earliest.”

Video footage from Reuters partner ANI showed dozens of Samsung workers wearing the company uniform of blue shirts being transported in a bus to a hall.

The Samsung plant employs roughly 1,800 workers and more than 1,000 of them have been on strike. The factory makes appliances such as refrigerators, TVs and washing machines. Another Samsung plant that makes smartphones in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh has had no unrest.

The police also detained one of CITU’s senior leaders, E. Muthukumar, who was leading the Samsung protests at the factory near Chennai, according to the CITU’s Jenitan.

Kancheepuram police official Shanmugam said there was no timeline as to how long the workers will be detained.
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WELLINGTON, New Zealand — It’s noisy, smelly, shy – and New Zealand’s bird of the year.

The hoiho, or yellow-eyed penguin, won the country’s fiercely fought avian election on Monday, offering hope to supporters of the endangered bird that recognition from its victory might prompt a revival of the species.

It followed a campaign for the annual Bird of the Year vote that was absent the foreign interference scandals and cheating controversies of past polls. Instead, campaigners in the long-running contest sought votes in the usual ways — launching meme wars, seeking celebrity endorsements and even getting tattoos to prove their loyalty.

More than 50,000 people voted in the poll, 300,000 fewer than last year, when British late night host John Oliver drove a humorous campaign for the pūteketeke — a “deeply weird bird” which eats and vomits its own feathers – securing a landslide win.

This year, the number of votes cast represented 10% of the population of New Zealand — a country where nature is never far away and where a love of native birds is instilled in citizens from childhood.

“Birds are our heart and soul,” said Emma Rawson, who campaigned for the fourth-placed ruru, a small brown owl with a melancholic call. New Zealand’s only native mammals are bats and marine species, putting the spotlight on its birds, which are beloved — and often rare.

This year’s victor, the hoiho — its name means “noise shouter” in the Māori language — is a shy bird thought to be the world’s rarest penguin. Only found on New Zealand’s South and Chatham islands — and on subantarctic islands south of the country — numbers have dropped perilously by 78% in the past 15 years.

“This spotlight couldn’t have come at a better time. This iconic penguin is disappearing from mainland Aotearoa before our eyes,” Nicola Toki, chief executive of Forest & Bird — the organization that runs the poll — said in a press release, using the Māori name for New Zealand. Despite intensive conservation efforts on land, she said, the birds drown in nets and sea and can’t find enough food.

“The campaign has raised awareness, but what we really hope is that it brings tangible support,” said Charlie Buchan, campaign manager for the hoiho. But while the bird is struggling, it attracted a star billing in the poll: celebrity endorsements flew in from English zoologist Jane Goodall, host of the Amazing Race Phil Keoghan, and two former New Zealand prime ministers.

Aspiring bird campaign managers — this year ranging from power companies to high school students — submit applications to Forest & Bird for the posts. The hoiho bid was run by a collective of wildlife groups, a museum, a brewery and a rugby team in the city of Dunedin, where the bird is found on mainland New Zealand, making it the highest-powered campaign of the 2024 vote.

“I do feel like we were the scrappy underdog,” said Emily Bull, a spokesperson for the runner-up campaign, for the karure — a small, “goth” black robin only found on New Zealand’s Chatham Island.

The karure’s bid was directed by the students’ association at Victoria University of Wellington, prompting fierce skirmish on the college campus when the student magazine staged an opposing campaign for the kororā, or little blue penguin.

The rivalry provoked a meme war and students in bird costumes. Several people got tattoos. When the magazine’s campaign secured endorsements of the city council and local zoo, Bull despaired for the black robin’s bid.

But the karure – which has performed a real-life comeback since the 1980s, with conservation efforts increasing the species from five birds to 250 – took second place overall.

This weekend as Rawson wrapped up her campaign for the ruru, she too took her efforts directly to the people, courting votes at a local dog park. The veteran campaign manager who has directed the bids for other birds in past years was rewarded by the ruru placing fourth in the poll, her best ever result.

“I have not been in human political campaigning before,” said Rawson, who is drawn to the competition because of the funds and awareness it generates. The campaign struck a more sedate tone this year, she added.

“There’s been no international interference, even though that was actually a lot of fun,” she said, referring to Oliver’s high-profile campaign.

It was not the only controversy the election has seen. While anyone in the world can vote, Forest & Bird now requires electors to verify their ballots after foreign interference plagued the contest before. In 2018, Australian pranksters cast hundreds of fraudulent votes in favor of the shag.

The following year, Forest & Bird was forced to clarify that a flurry of votes from Russia appeared to be from legitimate bird-lovers.

While campaigns are fiercely competitive, managers described tactics more akin to pro wrestling — in which fights are scripted — than divisive political contests.

“Sometimes people want to make posts that are kind of like beefy with you and they’ll always message you and be like, hey, is it okay if I post this?” Bull said. “There is a really sweet community. It’s really wholesome.”
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Islamabad — Pakistan has documented the killings of 11 journalists in 2024, reaching a record-breaking annual tally with nearly four months left in the year.

The South Asian nation continues to face persistent criticism for an alleged lack of justice or impunity for journalists’ murders, making it one of the world’s most dangerous countries for media workers.

The latest victim was Nisar Lehri, a 50-year-old Pakistani journalist and secretary of a local press club in violence-hit southwestern Balochistan province. Unknown assailants shot and killed him on September 4 near his home in the town of Mastung for his reporting about criminal elements, according to a complaint filed with the area police.

Lehri’s murder followed the death of reporter Muhammad Bachal Ghunio on August 27. He was associated with the local Awaz TV channel and was targeted by gunmen in his native Ghotki district in southeastern Sindh province.

Ghunio’s family and police investigators believe he was killed because of his reporting. Police subsequently announced the arrest of a suspect, and the recovery of a weapon allegedly used in the attack.

Islamabad-based nonprofit Freedom Network, an advocate for press freedoms, reported that before the two fatalities, nine journalists were killed in Pakistan this year, including a YouTube show host. 

“Safety is every journalist’s key concern while reporting, and given the fact that 11 journalists, including a YouTuber, were killed this year so far, it has a chilling effect on independent media,” Iqbal Khattak, the executive director of the nonprofit network, told VOA. 

Pakistani officials blame growing terrorist activities in the country for the uptick in attacks on journalists.

However, critics dispute these claims, noting that many of the journalist fatalities this year occurred in Sindh and the country’s most populous Punjab province, which have been relatively peaceful compared to terrorism-hit Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. 

While Pakistan’s military and its intelligence agencies are routinely accused of orchestrating violence against journalists critical of their involvement in national politics, influential feudal lords and politicians in Sindh, as well as Punjab, are often blamed for ordering violence against media workers in their native constituencies and escaping accountability. 

“The deep-rooted impunity and political instability are driving the current violence. However, the list of press freedom predators is not restricted to the two drivers,” Khattak stated. “The list is long to name the predators. Terrorism is not excluded,” he added.

Pakistani Information Minister Attaullah Tarar told reporters Saturday that the federal government is working closely with authorities in the four provinces to address the challenges facing journalists.

“There are incidents in Sindh, I totally agree. Some people often use political influence to get their way and get out of these cases,” Tarar stated when asked by VOA about his government’s role in addressing the cases of fatal attacks on journalists and providing justice to their families.

The minister pledged to coordinate with provincial counterparts to investigate these cases and deter further violence against media workers.

“We need to set an example in one or two cases, so this does not happen again. I think this is a very important issue which needs to be handled,” Tarar said.  

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), a U.S.-based global media rights group, mourned the deaths of Lehri and Ghunio in a Friday statement. 

“Pakistani authorities must immediately bring the perpetrators of the killings … to justice and show urgent political will to end the horrifying cycle of violence against journalists that has continued this year across Pakistan,” said Beh Lih Yi, the CPJ Asia program coordinator.

“The press in Pakistan cannot carry out their journalism unless the government and security agencies put an end to the impunity against journalists in the country,” she stressed. 

The CPJ statement also noted that dozens of Pakistani journalists have been attacked or forced into hiding this year due to their reporting across the country.

Another global media watchdog, Reporters Without Borders (RSF), urged Pakistan’s federal and provincial authorities in a recent report to take urgent measures to address the alarming decline in press freedom in the country.

“The many press freedom violations reveal a climate of violence, and a determination to censor that has little in common with the undertakings by the political parties in their elections campaign manifestos and the message of support for journalists by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif,” stated Celia Mercier, the head of RSF’s South Asia desk.

“Pakistan remains one of the world’s most dangerous countries for media personnel, and the level of impunity for the murders of journalists is appalling,” Mercier said in June.  

Stifling free press

Until this month, millions of Pakistanis experienced significant disruptions in accessing major social media platforms nationwide, including Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, drawing a public outcry.

The military-backed Sharif government was blamed for imposing the shutdowns and internet slowdowns to deter dissent or political unrest. 

Pakistani authorities rejected the allegations and blamed internet disruptions on a faulty submarine internet cable. 

In an August 28 announcement, the state regulator, the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority, announced that repairs to the faulty cable would likely be completed by early October, but slow internet speeds might persist until then. 

VOA Islamabad Bureau Chief Sarah Zaman contributed to this report.
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DHAKA, Bangladesh — A high-level U.S. delegation met Sunday with the head of Bangladesh’s interim government, Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, to affirm “dedication to fostering inclusive economic growth,” according to the American embassy in Dhaka. 

Yunus took over after former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina fled the country last month amid a mass uprising. She was accused of corruption, violation of human rights and excessive use of force against the protesters. 

During her 15-year rule, Hasina enjoyed close relations with India, China and Russia who have heavily invested in the country’s infrastructure development, trade and investment. The U.S. has also become the single largest foreign investor in Bangladesh under Hasina. 

Yunus on Sunday said he sought U.S. support “to rebuild the country, carry out vital reforms, and bring back stolen assets,” his press office said in a statement after he met the delegation at the State Guest House Jamuna in Dhaka. 

He told the U.S. representatives his interim administration has moved fast to “reset, reform, and restart” the economy, initiate reforms in financial sectors, and fix institutions such as the judiciary and police, the statement said. 

The U.S. delegation, led by Brent Neiman, assistant secretary for International Finance at the U.S. Department of the Treasury, had representatives from the U.S. Agency for International Development, and Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. Donald Lu, assistant secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs, joined the delegation after visiting India. 

They met with several officials in Dhaka, including Touhid Hossain, the country’s adviser to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The USAID also signed an agreement to provide $202.25 million in aid to Bangladesh. 

The U.S. embassy on X underscored how American companies are entrenched in the South Asian country. 

“With the right economic reforms in place, the American private sector can help unlock Bangladesh’s growth potential through trade and investment,” the embassy wrote on its official account. 

The delegation also met representatives of the American companies under the American Chamber of Commerce in Bangladesh (AmCham) operating in Bangladesh upon arriving Saturday. 

Concerns over safety and lack of order in Bangladesh were relayed by the companies’ agents. 

AmCham President Syed Ershad Ahmed said at the meeting that while there were improvements after the interim government was installed, “there are some bottlenecks too.” Profit repatriation amid the ongoing crisis of U.S. dollars and challenges in the supply chain resulting from congestion at ports were among the issues he raised. 

The meeting came as unrest took hold of the country’s major garment industry with workers walking out, leaving factories shuttered, as they demanded better benefits including higher wages. The factory owners, the government and workers’ leaders are holding meetings to ease the tension. 

Bangladesh is one of the most vulnerable countries to climate-induced disasters. The U.S. embassy on its official Facebook page said the United States wanted to help it “mitigate climate risks.” 
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DILI, East Timor — It was the farthest trip of his pontificate and one of the longest papal trips ever in terms of days on the road and distance traveled. But Pope Francis, age 87, hobbled by bad knees and bent over with sciatica, appeared to be having the time of his life.

With half of East Timor’s population gathered at a seaside park, Francis couldn’t help but oblige them with a final good night and languid loops in his popemobile, long after the sun had set and the field was lit by cellphone screens.

It was late, the heat and humidity had turned Tasitolu park into something of a sauna, and most of the journalists had already gone back to their air-conditioned hotel to watch the Mass on TV. But there was Francis, defying the doubters who had questioned if he could, would or should make such an arduous trip to Asia given everything that could go wrong.

“How many children you have!” Francis marveled to the crowd of 600,000, which amounted to the biggest-ever turnout for a papal event as a proportion of the population. “A people that teaches its children to smile is a people that has a future.”

The moment seemed to serve as proof that, despite his age, ailments and seven hours of jet lag, Pope Francis still could pope, still likes to pope and has it in him to pope like he used to at the start of his pontificate.

That’s never truer than when he’s in his element: in the peripheries of the world, among people forgotten by the big powers, where he can go off-script to respond to the spirit of the moment.

And it was certainly the case on his 11-day trip through Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore, during which he clocked nearly 33,000 kilometers (20,505 miles) in air travel alone. It was a trip that he had originally planned to make in 2020 but COVID-19 intervened.

Four years and a handful of hospitalizations later (for intestinal and pulmonary problems), Francis finally pulled it off. He seemed to relish getting out of the Vatican and away from the weighty grind of the Holy See after being cooped up all year, much of it battling a long bout of bronchitis.

Francis does tend to rally during foreign trips, though he usually sticks to a script when he’s in the protocol meetings with heads of state, dutifully delivering speeches that were written in advance by Vatican diplomats.

But when he’s meeting with young people or local priests and nuns, he tends to show his true colors. He’ll ditch his prepared remarks and speak off-the-cuff, often engaging in back-and-forth banter with the faithful to make sure his message has stuck.

Doing so thrills the crowd, terrorizes his translators and complicates the work of journalists, but you always know Francis is enjoying himself and feels energized when he goes rogue. And he went rogue plenty of times in Asia — and on the in-flight press conference coming back to Rome, during which he urged American Catholics to vote for who they think is the “lesser evil” for president.

Francis started in Indonesia, arguably the most delicate destination on his itinerary given the country is home to the world’s largest Muslim population. The Vatican would be loathe to say or do anything that might cause offense.

And yet from his very first encounter with President Joko Widodo, Francis appeared in a feisty mood, praising Indonesia’s relatively high birthrate while lamenting that in the West, “some prefer a cat or a little dog.”

Francis has frequently made the same demographic quip at home in Italy, which has one of the world’s lowest birthrates. But the high-profile trip meant that his trademark sarcasm got amplified. American commentators immediately assumed Francis had entered the “childless cat ladies” debate roiling U.S. politics, but there was no indication he had JD Vance in mind.

Even in the most delicate moment in Jakarta, at Southeast Asia’s biggest mosque, Francis threw protocol aside and kissed the hand of the grand imam and brought it to his cheek in gratitude.

In Papua New Guinea, Francis was similarly jazzed after pulling off a visit to a remote jungle outpost that had seemed impossible for him to reach: The airport in Vanimo, population 11,000, doesn’t have an ambulift wheelchair elevator that Francis now needs to get on and off planes, and bringing one in just for him was out of the question.

The stubborn pope, who really, really wanted to go to Vanimo, ended up rolling on and off the back ramp of a C-130 cargo plane that Australia had offered to get him, and the metric ton of medicine and other supplies he brought with him, to the town.

Despite the considerable security concerns of entering a region torn by tribal rivalries, Francis seemed to relish the jungle visit, perhaps because he felt so much at home. A dozen Argentine missionary priests and nuns have lived in Vanimo with the local community for years and had invited him to come. They decorated the simple stage in front of the church with a statue of Argentina’s beloved Virgin of Lujan, to whom Francis is particularly devoted, and had a gourd of mate, the Argentine tea, waiting for him.

In East Timor Francis had to negotiate perhaps the most sensitive issue clouding the visit: the case of Bishop Carlos Ximenes Belo, the revered national hero who won the Nobel Peace Prize for his nonviolent independence campaign. The Vatican revealed in 2022 that it had sanctioned Belo, who now lives in Portugal, for having sexually abused young boys and ordered him to cease contact with East Timor.

Francis didn’t mention Belo by name and didn’t meet with his victims, but he did reaffirm the need to protect children from “abuse.” There was nary a mention of Belo’s name in any official speech during a visit in which East Timor’s traumatic history and independence fight were repeatedly evoked.

In Singapore, his final stop, Francis once again ditched his remarks when he arrived at the last event, a meeting of Singaporean youth on Friday morning.

“That’s the talk I prepared,” he said, pointing to his speech and then proceeding to launch into a spontaneous back-and-forth with the young people about the need to have courage and take risks.

“What’s worse: Make a mistake because I take a certain path, or not make a mistake and stay home?” he asked them.

He answered his own question, with a response that could explain his own risky decision to embark on the Asia trip in the first place.

“A young person who doesn’t take a risk, who is afraid of making a mistake, is an old person,” the 87-year-old pope said.

“I hope all of you go forward,” he said. “Don’t go back. Don’t go back. Take risks.”
…

SHANGHAI/BEIJING — Shanghai halted transportation links, recalled ships and shut tourism spots including Shanghai Disney Resort on Sunday as it braced for Typhoon Bebinca, in what could be the strongest tropical cyclone to hit the Chinese financial hub since 1949.

The Category 1 typhoon, packing maximum sustained wind speeds near its center of around 144 kph, was about 500 kilometers southeast of Shanghai as of 1 p.m.  It is expected to make landfall along China’s eastern coast after midnight on Monday.

The strongest storm to make landfall in Shanghai in recent decades was Typhoon Gloria in 1949, which tore through the city with gusts of 144 kph. Shanghai was last threatened by a direct hit in 2022 by the powerful Typhoon Muifa, which instead landed 300 kilometers away in the city of Zhoushan, in Zhejiang province.

Shanghai is typically spared the strong typhoons that hit farther south in China, including Yagi, a destructive Category 4 storm that roared past southern Hainan province last week. But Shanghai and neighboring provinces are taking no chances with Category 1 Bebinca.

Resorts in Shanghai, including Shanghai Disney Resort, Jinjiang Amusement Park and Shanghai Wild Animal Park, have been temporarily closed while most ferries have been halted to and from Chongming Island – China’s third-biggest island known as “the gateway to the Yangtze River.”

More than 600 flights to and from Shanghai were also canceled, according to local media.

In Zhejiang, ships have been recalled while several parks in the provincial capital Hangzhou announced closures.

Bebinca’s arrival will coincide with the Mid-Autumn festival, a nationwide three-day holiday when many Chinese travel or engage in outdoor activities.

China’s Ministry of Water Resources on Saturday issued a Level-IV emergency response — the lowest level in China’s four-tier emergency response system — for potential flooding in Shanghai and the provinces of Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Anhui. 
…

Yangon, Myanmar — The death toll in Myanmar in the wake of Typhoon Yagi has jumped to 74, state media reported on Sunday, a day after its junta made a rare request for foreign aid.

Floods and landslides have killed almost 350 people in Myanmar, Vietnam, Laos and Thailand in the wake of Typhoon Yagi, which hit the region last weekend, according to official figures.

In Myanmar, the floods “resulted in 74 deaths and 89 people missing” as of Friday evening, the Global New Light of Myanmar said.

Search and rescue operations were ongoing, it said, adding that the floods had destroyed more than 65,000 houses and five dams, heaping further misery on the country where war has raged since the military’s 2021 coup.

The junta’s previous death toll was 33, with more than 235,000 people displaced, according to figures released Friday.

Swathes of farmland have been inundated in central regions, including around the sprawling, low-lying capital Naypyidaw.

There have been reports of landslides in hilly areas but with roads and bridges damaged and phone and internet lines down, compiling information has been difficult.

The Sittaung and Bago rivers, which flow through central and southern Myanmar, were both still above dangerous levels Sunday, state media said, although water levels were expected to fall in the coming days.

Authorities in Myanmar had opened 82 “relief camps” to house displaced people, according to state media.

Thailand’s weather office warned Sunday of further heavy rain in provinces along the Mekong river.

Request for aid

The floods have heaped more misery on Myanmar, where more than 2.7 million people have already displaced by conflict.

Myanmar’s junta chief made a rare request for foreign aid to deal with the floods, state media reported Saturday.

The military has previously blocked or frustrated humanitarian assistance from abroad.

Last year it suspended travel authorizations for aid groups trying to reach around a million victims of powerful Cyclone Mocha that hit the west of the country.

On Saturday the U.N.’s Office for the Coordination for Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) in Myanmar and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) told AFP they could not currently comment on the junta’s request.

Heavy monsoon rains lash Southeast Asia every year, but human-made climate change is causing more intense weather patterns that can make destructive floods more likely.

Climate change is causing typhoons to form closer to the coast, intensify faster and stay longer over land, according to a study published in July. 
…

BEIJING — China’s economy softened in August, extending a slowdown in industrial activity and real estate prices as Beijing faces pressure to ramp up spending to stimulate demand.

Data published by the National Bureau of Statistics Saturday showed weakening activity across industrial production, retail sales and real estate this month compared to July.

“We should be aware that the adverse impacts arising from the changes in the external environment are increasing,” said Liu Aihua, the bureau’s chief economist in a news conference.

Liu said that demand remained insufficient at home, and the sustained economic recovery still confronts multiple difficulties and challenges.

China has been grappling with a lagging economy post-COVID, with weak consumer demand, persistent deflationary pressures and a contraction in factory activity.

Chinese leaders have ramped up investment in manufacturing to rev up an economy that stalled during the pandemic and is still growing slower than hoped.

Beijing also has to deal with increasing pressure to implement large-scale stimulus measures to boost economic growth.

While industrial production rose by 4.5% in August compared to a year ago, it declined from July’s 5.1% growth, according to the bureau’s data released.

Retail sales grew 2.1% from the same time last year, slower than the 2.7% increase last month.

Fixed asset investment rose by 3.4% from January to August, down from 3.6% in the first seven months.

Meanwhile, investment in real estate declined by 10.2% from January to August, compared to last year.

The figures released Saturday come after trade data for August saw imports grow just 0.5% compared to a year ago.

The consumer price index rose 0.6% in August, missing forecasts according to data released Monday. Officials attributed the higher CPI to an increase in food prices due to bad weather.

But the core CPI, which excludes food and energy prices, rose by just 0.3% in August, the slowest in over three years.
…

…

Yangon, Myanmar — Myanmar’s junta chief made a rare request Saturday for foreign aid to cope with deadly floods that have displaced hundreds of thousands of people who have endured three years of war.

Floods and landslides have killed almost 300 people in Myanmar, Vietnam, Laos and Thailand in the wake of Typhoon Yagi, which dumped a colossal deluge of rain when it hit the region last weekend.

In Myanmar more than 235,000 people have been forced from their homes by floods, the junta said Friday, piling further misery on the country where war has raged since the military seized power in 2021.

“Officials from the government need to contact foreign countries to receive rescue and relief aid to be provided to the victims,” Min Aung Hlaing said on Friday, according to the Global New Light of Myanmar newspaper.

“It is necessary to manage rescue, relief and rehabilitation measures as quickly as possible,” he was quoted as saying.

The junta gave a death toll on Friday of 33, while earlier in the day the country’s fire department said rescuers had recovered 36 bodies.

A military spokesman said it had lost contact with some areas of the country and was investigating reports that dozens had been buried in landslides in a gold-mining area in the central Mandalay region.

Aid restrictions

Myanmar’s military has previously blocked or frustrated humanitarian assistance from abroad.

Last year it suspended travel authorizations for aid groups trying to reach around a million victims of powerful Cyclone Mocha that hit the west of the country.

At the time the United Nations slammed that decision as “unfathomable.”

AFP has contacted a spokesperson for the U.N. in Myanmar for comment.

After cyclone Nargis killed at least 138,000 people in Myanmar in 2008, the then-junta was accused of blocking emergency aid and initially refusing to grant access to humanitarian workers and supplies.

Military trucks carried small rescue boats to flood-hit areas around the military-built capital Naypyidaw on Saturday, AFP reporters said.

On Friday hundreds of villagers waded or swam through chin-high waters to safety following floods around the capital.

Some told AFP they had sheltered in trees overnight to escape the raging flood waters below.

State media said flooding in the area around the capital had caused landslides and destroyed electricity towers, buildings, roads, bridges and houses.

More than 2.7 million people were already displaced in Myanmar by conflict triggered by the junta’s 2021 coup.
…

washington — Recent moves by Pyongyang have focused attention on what will be one of the first major foreign policy challenges facing the next U.S. president: how to deal with North Korea’s rapidly developing nuclear threat.

In a set of rapid-fire developments on Friday:

— North Korean leader Kim Jong Un called for an “exponential increase” in the size of his nation’s nuclear arsenal, according to the state-run news agency KCNA. He made the same call in speeches on Tuesday and on the last day of 2022.

— State media released photos for the first time of the Nuclear Weapons Institute where North Korea processes uranium for the manufacture of nuclear weapons. The photos, which showed a sophisticated array of centrifuges, were made public as Kim toured the facility.

— North Korea announced that it had tested a new type of 600 mm multiple rocket launcher the previous day. South Korea said on Thursday that North Korea test-fired several short-range ballistic missiles into the waters off the eastern coast.

The developments came in the context of enhanced military cooperation between North Korea and Russia, which is believed to be helping Pyongyang to develop its weapons capabilities in exchange for munitions used in Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

“The threat from North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs has been growing steadily and virtually unchecked over the course of several U.S. administrations,” said Evans Revere, a former State Department official with extensive experience negotiating with North Korea.

“Whoever the next U.S. president is, she or he will face a more sophisticated and dangerous North Korean threat.”

Revere said in an interview that the winner of the U.S. election would have to find ways to weaken the link between Moscow and Pyongyang “and demonstrate to Beijing that its ‘partnership without limits’ with Russia is a dangerous and ill-advised path that will yield no benefits” for China.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping declared in May a “new era” in opposition to the U.S. and reaffirmed the “no limits” partnership that was first announced just days before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

While China has held back on providing Russia with arms for its war effort, the United States has accused it of delivering electronic components and other dual-use items that are keeping Moscow’s arms industry afloat.

Pyongyang, for its part, denies participating in any arms transfers to Russia, an act that would violate United Nations sanctions.

But a report this week by Conflict Armament Research, a U.K.-based group that tracks weapons in armed conflicts, said parts from four North Korean missiles have been found in Ukraine.

The missiles, examined by Kyiv, are either KN-23 or KN-24, known as Hwasong-11 short-range missile series, and thought to have been used in attacks in July and August, the report said.

Pyongyang-Moscow military ties have also been expanded to include tourism, trade, and economic and technical cooperation.

This makes the use of sanctions less effective as a policy tool to counter North Korea’s nuclear buildup, according to Gary Samore, former White House coordinator for arms control and weapons of mass destruction during the Obama administration.

“That’s not as much leverage now as it was before because of the Russian-North Korean relationship,” said Samore. “The U.S. doesn’t have very strong economic leverage that it can use with North Korea.”

With few obvious policy options available, the two presidential candidates – former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris – have largely confined themselves to criticizing each other’s approach without laying out any specific plans to roll back the North Korean threat.

At Tuesday night’s televised debate, Harris criticized Trump for exchanging “love letters with Kim Jong Un” during his presidency while Trump disapproved of the current administration’s handling of the issue, saying, “Look at what’s going on in North Korea.”

During his presidency, Trump held three summits with Kim but the diplomatic effort ultimately failed when Trump refused Kim’s demand for sanctions relief in exchange for a partial rollback of his nuclear program.

There have been no formal talks between the two countries since, although the Biden administration insists it is open to negotiations without preconditions, a policy that Harris could be expected to continue if elected.

The Biden administration also maintains that its goal remains the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, even as many experts suggest it is time to acknowledge that Pyongyang will not give up its weapons and say the international community should focus on containment.

Samore predicted that a Harris administration would continue to say that “as an ultimate objective … the U.S. seeks denuclearization in the long term.”

A second Trump administration, he theorized, may say “denuclearization is no longer possible” and “accept North Korea as a nuclear power.”

Robert Rapson, who served as charge d’affaires and deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Seoul from 2018 to 2021, said much would depend on how the winner of the election decides to work with regional allies South Korea and Japan.

“In the likely absence of any grand outreach towards Pyongyang, Harris will have to carefully manage the relationship with ally Seoul, with a focus for the foreseeable future on maintaining peace and stability on the peninsula,” he said.

He added that it was “uncertain at this moment” whether Trump would feel compelled to reach out to Kim and whether he would diminish the value of the alliances with South Korea and Japan.

Eunjung Cho contributed to this report.
…

washington — China is among the foreign governments that retaliate against people for engaging with the United Nations, according to a report released this week by the U.N. Secretary-General.

The report highlights how hard Beijing tries to silence its critics, according to Sophie Richardson, an expert on human rights in China.

“These [U.N.] mechanisms are some of the only ones available to people inside China, at least on paper, to provide any modicum of redress or justice for the human rights abuses either they’ve endured or the communities they work with have endured,” Richardson told VOA.

“That’s why you see the Chinese government go to extraordinary lengths to silence people who are simply trying to take reports to some of these human rights experts or bodies,” Richardson said.

A former China director at Human Rights Watch, Richardson is currently a visiting scholar at Stanford University.

The annual report chronicles government retaliation against people for engaging with the U.N. In addition to China, other countries named in the report include Colombia, India, Nicaragua, the Philippines and Russia.

“In my perfect world, governments that get referenced in these reprisals reports shouldn’t be members of the Human Rights Council,” said Richardson, who is based in Washington. China is a current member of the council in Geneva.

China’s Washington embassy, as well as its U.N. offices in New York and Geneva, did not reply to VOA’s emails requesting comment for this story.

One of the incidents included in the report’s China section is harassment against two members of the international legal team supporting Jimmy Lai, a pro-democracy publisher.

Lai is on trial in Hong Kong on national security charges that are widely viewed as politically motivated. The 76-year-old is in prison following convictions in other cases that supporters also view as sham cases.

Members of Lai’s legal team have faced death and rape threats, as well as attempts by unknown sources to hack their email and bank accounts, according to the report.

Sebastien Lai thanked the U.N. for shedding light on his father’s case.

“These intimidation tactics will not succeed. I will not rest until my father is freed,” he said in a statement.

Caoilfhionn Gallagher KC, a barrister leading Jimmy’s international legal team, also condemned the attacks.

The reprisals “are personally unpleasant and distressing,” Gallagher said in a statement. “But they are also an attack on the legal profession and on the international human rights system.”

The reprisals make it harder for Jimmy Lai to use U.N. mechanisms to achieve justice in his case, Gallagher said.

Hong Kong’s government has tried to argue that the legal team interfered in Hong Kong’s judicial process by bringing his case to U.N. human rights mechanisms, according to the report.

“It’s just so nakedly in tension with its obligations under international law,” Richardson said.

On Thursday, Lai’s international legal team submitted an urgent appeal to the U.N. special rapporteur on torture. The appeal raised several concerns, including that the elderly publisher has been in solitary confinement since late 2020 and that the British national has been denied access to independent medical care, according to a statement from his legal team.

Lai’s trial began in December 2023. It was initially expected to last around 80 days but is now expected to resume in November.

Press freedom groups have called the trial a sham, and the U.S. and British governments have called for his immediate release. Hong Kong officials, however, have said he will receive a fair trial.

Other incidents cited in the U.N. report include the case of Cao Shunli, a Beijing-based human rights defender who was arrested following an attempt to engage in a universal periodic review of China’s human rights record at the Human Rights Council. Cao died in custody in 2014.

Another case is that of the Beijing-based activists Li Wenzu and Wang Quanzhang, who are married. The couple have faced significant retaliation, including police surveillance and evictions, and their son is unable to enroll in school due to pressure from state authorities, the report said.

“If one reads these cases, you get a sense of what risks — what unbelievable risks — people are taking to do this kind of work,” Richardson said.

The report doesn’t mention specific incidents involving Uyghurs or Tibetans, but Richardson says their absence underscores how difficult it is for some groups to access U.N. mechanisms in the first place, as well as how some people may be too scared to report such incidents to the U.N.

The Chinese government has engaged in severe human rights abuses against both ethnic groups, according to myriad reports. Multiple governments and international human rights organizations have accused Beijing of committing genocide and crimes against humanity against the Uyghurs, which the Chinese government rejects.
…

Taipei, Taiwan — An expected visit to Hawaii by the head of China’s Southern Theater Command next week will come just days after a high-ranking Pentagon official attended a defense conference in Beijing.

The visits, analysts said, are part of an effort to expand high-level exchanges between the U.S. and China and boost top-level military-to-military communication. It is unclear, though, how much the exchanges will do to help avoid miscommunication and keep tensions in the Indo-Pacific under control, they added.

Earlier this week, the head of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, Admiral Sam Paparo, and the head of the PLA, or People’s Liberation Army, Southern Theater Command, General Wu Yanan, held a video call for the first time in years.

The Chinese defense ministry said the two commanders had an “in-depth exchange of views on issues of common concern” while Paparo urged the Chinese military “to reconsider its use of dangerous, coercive and potentially escalatory tactics in the South China Sea and beyond.”

Wu is expected to attend a defense conference held by the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command in Hawaii next week, U.S. defense officials have confirmed to VOA.

Meanwhile, Michael Chase, the U.S. deputy assistant secretary of defense for China, Taiwan and Mongolia, is holding defense policy coordination talks with Chinese defense officials while attending the annual Xiangshan Security Dialogue held in Beijing this week.

A meeting that took place on the sidelines of the Xiangshan forum was designed to “underscore the United States’ shared vision for the region,” according to a U.S. Department of Defense readout Thursday.

The Biden administration has been working to restore communication between Chinese and American militaries since the U.S. president’s meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the APEC summit in California last November.

Chase’s visit to Beijing this week and Wu’s expected reciprocal visit next week follow a first meeting between U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan and China’s vice chairman of the Central Military Commission, Zhang Youxia, last month.

During that meeting, Zhang said maintaining military security is “in line with the common interests of both sides” and Sullivan highlighted the two nations’ shared responsibility to “prevent competition from veering into conflict or confrontation.”

Some analysts see a potential for further communication and engagement between the two militaries.

“I won’t rule out the possibilities that Beijing and Washington may look to establish a hotline between the two militaries, and whether that mechanism could be extended to the theater command level remains to be seen,” Lin Ying-Yu, a military expert at Tamkang University in Taiwan, told VOA by phone.

While the resumption of top-level communication allows Beijing and Washington to avoid miscalculations, other experts say it is unclear whether China and the U.S. can establish a more sustainable mechanism to cope with potential crises.

“While having contact and knowing your interlocutors are positive things during non-crisis times, the real test is whether these contacts can hold back any unintended escalation when incidents happen,” said Ian Chong, a political scientist at the National University of Singapore.

Chong said since theater commanders from the U.S. and China oversee implementing rather than formulating policies, it is unclear whether the latest development can become established protocols.

“If there’s a persistence of [maintaining military-to-military communication], then it would suggest that it has become a policy,” he told VOA by phone.

Tensions remain high over contentious issues

Tensions remain high between China and the U.S. over a range of issues, including the repeated collision between Chinese and Philippine vessels near disputed reefs in the South China Sea and Beijing’s increased maneuvers in waters and airspace near Taiwan and Japan.

During the Xiangshan forum, Lieutenant General He Lei, the former vice president of the PLA Academy of Military Sciences, characterized the Philippines’ attempt to safeguard its territorial claims in the South China Sea as “a unilateral change of the status quo” while accusing the U.S. of undermining security across the Taiwan Strait by selling weapons to Taiwan.

“The Chinese people and the People’s Liberation Army will never allow any external forces to interfere in China’s internal affairs or invade China’s territory,” he told Chinese state broadcaster CGTN in an interview.

Some analysts say there are limits to what military-to-military communications can do to ease tensions over what are essentially political disagreements.

“The military tension is only a manifestation of their political differences over Taiwan and the South China Sea, so if their disagreements are not resolved, the military tension is very unlikely to see a permanent resolution,” Yun Sun, China program director at the Stimson Center in Washington, told VOA by phone.

With less than two months until the U.S. presidential election, Chong in Singapore said Beijing and Washington’s recent efforts may be an attempt to lay the foundation for bilateral military-to-military communication to be continued after the November election.

“On the Democrat side, if some of the current team stays [after November], perhaps we would see this momentum continue,” he told VOA.

“On the Republican side, things are a bit messier, because you have those who prefer the isolationist approach, those who advocate a containment approach in Asia, and people who talk about competing against China to win,” Chong added.

Sun said if Donald Trump wins the election in November, Beijing will expect instability in bilateral relations and be prepared for the military relationship to be affected.
…

Taipei, Taiwan — The U.S.-China technology war is playing out in the smartphone market in China, where global rivals Apple and Huawei released new phones this week. Industry experts say Apple, which lacks home-field advantage, faces many challenges in defending its market share in the country.

The biggest highlight of the iPhone 16 is its artificial intelligence system, dubbed Apple Intelligence, while the Huawei Mate XT features innovative tri-fold screen technology.  But at a starting price of RMB 19,999, about $2,810, the Mate XT will cost about three times as much as the iPhone 16.

According to data from VMall, Huawei’s official shopping site, nearly 5.74 million people in China preordered the Mate XT as of late Thursday, 5½ days after Huawei began accepting preorders.

But in a survey conducted on the Chinese microblogging site Weibo by Radio France International, half of the 9,200 respondents said they would not purchase a Mate XT because the price is prohibitive. An additional 3,500 said they are not in the market for a new phone now.

“I suggest that Huawei release some products that ordinary people can afford,” a Weibo user wrote under the name “Diamond Man Yang Dong Feng.”

The iPhone 16 is not available for preorder until Friday, but some e-commerce vendors in China have promised to deliver the new devices to consumers within half a day to two days of sale.

In the competition between Apple and Huawei, iPhone 16 has some inherent disadvantages, said Shih-Fang Chiu, a senior industry analyst at the Taiwan Institute of Economic Research.

“Apple’s strength is information security and privacy, but this is difficult to achieve in the Chinese market, where the government can control the data in China’s market to a relatively high degree. In the era of AI mobile phones, this will bring challenges to Apple’s development in the Chinese market,” Chiu said.

Apple’s AI service on its iPhone 16 will roll out at a gradual pace in different languages, first in English and other languages later this year. The Chinese version will not be available until 2025.

There are other challenges Apple faces as well, Chiu added, such as regulatory controls, consumer sentiment favoring local brands and weakening spending power amid China’s economic slowdown.

According to Counterpoint Research’s statistics, Huawei held a market share of 15% in the second quarter of 2024, surpassing Apple’s 14% market share. That compares with Apple’s 17.3% share in 2023 as reported by the industry research firm International Data Corporation China, or IDC China.

Ryan Reith, the program vice president for IDC’s Mobile Device Tracker suite, said in a written response to VOA that the iPhone 16 has not made significant hardware upgrades and that AI applications alone are not attractive because consumers have GPT and other AI solutions.

AI applications are also another hurdle. Analyst Chih-Yen Tai said iPhone 16’s AI services involve personal data collection, information application and cloud computing, which will require collaboration with Chinese service providers.

That, along with the ban on Chinese civil servants and employees at state-owned enterprises from using their iPhone at work in recent years, will affect the sales of Apple products, said Tai, the deputy director of the Center for Science and Technology Policy Evaluation at Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research in Taipei.

“China’s patriotism has led to a strong number of preorders” for Huawei’s tri-fold phones, Tai said.

“The competitors in China will sell the idea [to consumers] that iPhones will soon be edged out of the premium smartphone market. So, in the next stage, the affordable iPhone versions will be the key to whether it [Apple] can return to China or its previous glorious sales era,” Tai said.

Tzu-Ang Chen, a senior consultant in the digital technology industry in Taipei, said use of Huawei’s HarmonyOS operating system surpassed that of Apple’s iOS in China in the first quarter of this year, representing China’s determination to “go its own way” and create “one world, two systems.”

“The U.S.-China technology war has extended to smartphones,” Chen said. “IPhone sales in China will get worse and worse, obviously because Huawei is doing better, and coupled with patriotism, Apple’s position in the hearts of 1.4 billion people will never return.”

He said that as China seeks to develop pro-China markets among member countries of the Belt and Road Initiative in Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Africa, China-made mobile phones may become their first choice.

VOA’s Adrianna Zhang contributed to this report.
…

HO CHI MINH CITY — Analysts say this week’s visit to Washington by Vietnamese Defense Minister Phan Van Giang shows advances in cooperation between the two countries, despite rising Vietnamese nationalism that may indicate rising anti-American sentiment in Vietnam.

A U.S.-based analyst told VOA on September 12 that Giang’s trip set the groundwork for Hanoi to potentially purchase military cargo planes from the United States this year.

Giang met with U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin at the Pentagon on Monday. [September 9] Both leaders “reaffirmed the importance of the U.S.-Vietnam partnership,” the Defense Department said in a statement, and noted the one-year anniversary of the elevation of the countries’ ties to a comprehensive strategic partnership, the highest tier in Hanoi’s diplomatic hierarchy.

The leaders also underscored the importance of working together to address the lasting impacts of the U.S.-Vietnam War. Austin announced that the U.S. would budget $65 million over the next five years to complete the decontamination of Bien Hoa airbase of dioxin, bringing the total from department to $215 million. The airbase was the primary storage site for the toxic chemical Agent Orange during the U.S.-Vietnam War and remains an environmental and public health hazard for those nearby.

Andrew Wells-Dang, who leads the Vietnam War Legacies and Reconciliation Initiative at the United States Institute of Peace, told VOA by phone on September 5 that diplomatic visits are key to advancing war-remediation efforts, including finding and identifying the remains of missing soldiers. He said that along with the U.S. visit of Deputy Defense Minister Vo Minh Luong in July, visits from authorities provide “opportunity for them to have high level support.”

Zachary Abuza, a professor at the National War College in Washington and an expert on Southeast Asia, said joint war-reconciliation efforts also set the groundwork for defense cooperation more broadly.

“The United States is very pleased with the growth in bilateral defense relations, and it started from very low levels and was built on humanitarian missions,” Abuza said during the August 29 call.

“We’ve just continued to build on that,” he added.

Cargo planes

Reuters reported in July that Hanoi was considering purchasing Lockheed Martin C-130 cargo planes from the U.S., according to unnamed sources.

The U.S.-based analyst, who asked that his name to be withheld because he has not been cleared to discuss the topic, said the C-130 deal was discussed but not finalized during Giang’s visit. The analyst said the deal was held back by the “massive [U.S.] bureaucracy” and because solidifying the purchase during the Washington visit would be “too inflammatory for the Chinese.”

Ian Storey, senior fellow at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore, noted Vietnam’s delicate diplomatic balancing act, illustrated by Giang’s travel itinerary before the Washington trip.

“Vietnam aims to keep its relations with the major powers in balance,” he wrote in an email on August 30. “As such, Vietnamese Defense Minister Phan Van Giang visited Russia and China in August.”

Storey added that the purchase of C-130 planes would not pose a threat to China in its maritime territorial disputes with Vietnam.

“C-130 aircraft would enable the Vietnamese to transport troops and supplies to its occupied atolls in the South China Sea, but these assets are non-strategic and won’t shift the dynamics in the South China Sea,” he wrote.

Nguyen The Phuong, a maritime security expert at the University of New South Wales Canberra, said the C-130 purchase would be a “symbolic move.”

“Vietnam will try to explore more areas of security and defense cooperation between Vietnam and the United States to upgrade to a higher, more meaningful level,” he told VOA on August 30. “The C-130 would be the symbol of that kind of evolving relationship,” he said.

Phuong said a C-130 is a likely entry point as there is still mistrust between the former foes regarding lethal weapons, and the deal would not rankle China too much.

“It could be quite advantageous for Vietnam,” he said of a potential C-130 purchase. “Vietnam can improve its relationship with the United States, and at the same time, we could not anger China because Vietnam would just buy non-lethal weapons.”

Rising nationalism

Although there are positive signs to improving Hanoi-Washington relations, there have also been recent instances of anti-Western sentiment that could be an impediment to the countries relations, Phuong said.

Fulbright University Vietnam, which has significant backing from the United States, is facing accusations of fomenting a “color revolution,” similar to the popular uprisings in former Soviet republics.

On August 21, Vietnam National Defense TV aired a critique of Fulbright for allegedly not displaying the Vietnamese flag at a graduation ceremony and facilitating a color revolution.

The report has since been taken down, but Phuong said the Fulbright issue and other recent incidents show tension between Vietnam’s conservative and liberal factions.

“It’s a presentation of a continuous struggle between different factions, one conservative and one liberal,” Phuong said.

Abuza said that Vietnamese authorities may be attempting to tighten control ahead of the anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War in 1975.

“Next April is the 50th anniversary of the fall of Saigon,” he said. “The Vietnamese want to control that narrative 100%. There are a lot of sensitivities.”

Along with the Fulbright incident, Phuong pointed to recent uproar around Vietnamese celebrities who were pictured with the South Vietnam flag while traveling to the United States. In addition, a Vietnamese high school student faced cyber bullying and was summoned by police after posting in September that he wanted to leave the country and would “probably never see the [Communist] Party positively again.”

“There’s extreme nationalism in Vietnam at the moment,” Phuong said. “It’s against Western values.”
…

washington — In a testament to the global influence of U.S. politics, this week’s televised debate between former president Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris broke through an intensely busy news cycle in South Asia to garner extensive coverage across most major news outlets.  

The pivotal showdown between the two contenders vying to succeed Joe Biden as U.S. president resonated with audiences across the region, overcoming a nine- to 10-hour time difference from Washington and competing with a barrage of pressing domestic headlines:    

In India, opposition leader Rahul Gandhi made a high-profile visit to the United States. In Bangladesh, interim leader Muhammad Yunus delivered his second major speech to the nation. And in Pakistan, the National Assembly speaker suspended security officials over the controversial arrest of five lawmakers in the Parliament building. 

Yet amid this flurry of regional developments, leading newspapers and TV stations from Karachi to Dhaka provided considerable coverage of the debate, reflecting heightened regional interest in the outcome of the U.S. presidential contest.       

“The news cycle in these countries is so fast, and the issues they are dealing with internally are so intense that probably their focus has shifted from what is happening elsewhere,” said Awais Saleem, a former Pakistani journalist now a professor at Lamar University in the U.S. state of Texas.    

“Nonetheless, [the U.S. election] is still keenly observed and keenly watched because whatever happens in the U.S. invariably has an effect in other parts of the world, and South Asia is no exception,” Saleem said.     

India  

Take India, the region’s most populous country and largest media market. Major Indian outlets, such as NDTV and CNN’s local affiliate, dedicated significant coverage to the debate, even while prioritizing Gandhi’s remarks in Washington. Aaj tak, another leading channel, had a correspondent reporting on the debate from the spin room in Philadelphia.      

Large-circulation newspapers provided more substantial coverage, even while relying on international wire services for content.     

The Times of India, India’s largest newspaper, featured a video analysis of the debate on its homepage. The Hindu, another major paper, ran multiple articles, including one focusing on Trump’s pledge to end the Ukraine war and another on Hollywood’s “applause” for Harris.      

While much of the coverage was routine, some stood out. In addition to broadcasting the debate live, NDTV produced at least 10 stories and segments dedicated to what it termed a “fiery presidential showdown.” These included highlights and key quotes, and major takeaways.      

While Indians are as divided over Trump and Harris as Americans, most local outlets widely reported on the American media’s verdict that Harris had outperformed Trump.      

Ahead of the debate, many Indians were skeptical of Harris, said Ashutosh, a veteran Indian journalist and co-founder of Satya Hindi. To find out how Harris did, Satya Hindi devoted a 30-minute segment featuring a U.S.-based Indian American academic, Ashutosh said.      

The verdict: Harris won the debate.      

“There now is a feeling that Kamala Harris is not a weak candidate,” said Ashutosh, who goes by one name.      

India, like other South Asian countries, lacks an American-style tradition of live election debates. The concept intrigues many but faces cultural and political obstacles, experts say.    

On Satya Hindi, another guest, journalist Shravan Garg, questioned their feasibility.  Would Indian TV channels “dare” to host live debates and would politicians “agree” to participate, he asked.      

Atul Singh, founder and editor-in-chief of Fair Observer, an international citizen journalism and civic education platform, said Indian interest in U.S. elections has surged in recent years, spurred by globalization and more recently by the Indian ancestry of Harris and Usha Vance, the wife of Republican vice-presidential nominee J.D. Vance.       

But he said the level of interest varies across the country. States with stronger ties to the U.S., such as Gujarat, a source of migration to the U.S., and Maharashtra, a manufacturing hub for exports to the U.S., are gripped by U.S. election fever. In more rural regions such as Bihar, with fewer connections to the U.S., enthusiasm is far more subdued.      

“So it depends on which part of the country you’re in,” Singh said. “I’d say some areas in India simply don’t care, and others, the ones that are part of the global economy, are absolutely obsessed.”     

Pakistan, Bangladesh   

In neighboring Pakistan and Bangladesh, the debate received far less coverage despite comparable public interest.     

Geo TV, Pakistan’s leading TV news channel, ran an international segment on the debate, reporting on the candidates’ “combative demeanor.” A wire story on its website noted that foreign policy “largely took a backseat.”     

Leading English language newspaper Dawn highlighted the debate as its top international story, reporting how Harris put Trump “on the defensive at a combative presidential debate.” A wire fact check about the debate was included among its “must read stories” on its homepage      

Express Tribune, another leading newspaper, picked up multiple wire service stories about the debate, posting three short video compilations on its websites, including a video of viral memes generated by Trump’s comment that migrants were eating people’s cats and dogs in Ohio.     

Atif Khan, a Pakistani journalist, said Harris’ unexpected emergence as the Democratic nominee helped boost Pakistani public interest in the U.S. presidential election.     

“Every political discussion on television now involves a mention of the U.S. election,” Khan said. “There is talk about Trump. There is talk about Kamala Harris.”     

While Pakistani media generally don’t cover elections in neighboring countries, some local outlets are already planning their U.S. election coverage and trying to secure U.S. visas for their reporters, he said.     

“Pakistanis think that a change of president will inevitably have direct implications for not just Pakistan but also the region,” he said.     

Underscoring the Pakistani media’s interest, Saleem, the Lamar University professor, noted receiving weekly invitations from various outlets to discuss the U.S. election campaign.      

Bangladesh  

In Bangladesh, the debate’s coverage was overshadowed by continuing reverberations from the August 5 collapse of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s government.     

While interim leader Yunus’ speech dominated headlines on Wednesday, leading outlets provided more substantive coverage of the debate, drawing on international wire stories and analysis.      

Prothom Alo, Bangladesh’s largest media outlet, called the debate, “the most important moment” before the November 5 election.      

Daily Star, one of the most reputable outlets, ran at least four stories, including a fact check and a video analysis.      

Daily Ittefaq, a Bengali language newspaper, ran a summary of U.S. media accounts of the debate, reporting that even the conservative Fox News had declared Harris the winner.     

Singh, founder of Fair Observer, said the post-Hasina political turmoil in Bangladesh likely contributed to the relatively thin coverage.     

“They’ve got their own fish to fry,” he said.     

But, he added, political elites in Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sri Lanka – all dependent on the International Monetary Fund, the global finance agency, largesse – are keenly watching the U.S. election campaign.      

“They are in economic crisis, so they follow the election for practical reasons,” he said.  

VOA’s Bangla, Deewa and Uru services contributed to this article.  
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Islamabad — Gunmen in central Afghanistan killed at least 14 Shiite Muslims in an overnight attack that was claimed by a local affiliate of the Islamic State group, multiple sources said Friday.

The Interior Ministry spokesperson in Kabul, Abdul Matin Qani, told the local TOLO news channel that assailants targeted a group of civilians in the Afghan province of Daykundi on Thursday. He did not, however, immediately share any details about the number of casualties or the nature of the attack.

The media outlet quoted area residents and sources as confirming that the violence had resulted in the deaths of at least 14 people and injuries to four others.

The Islamic State group said through its Amaq news agency that “soldiers” of its Afghan offshoot, the Islamic State Khorasan, also known as IS-K, were behind the shooting. It claimed that “15 Shiite [Muslims] were killed and six others wounded.”

Daykundi residents said the victims had gathered to welcome pilgrims returning from the Shiite holy site of Karbala in Iraq.

Richard Bennett, the United Nations special rapporteur on the Afghan human rights situation, denounced Thursday’s violence.

“Yesterday’s appalling ISKP-claimed killings of #Hazara from #Daykundi…. bears hallmarks of int’l crimes,” Bennett said Friday on social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter. “I’m alarmed about the spate of ISKP-claimed attacks. Need for prevention, protection & [international] accountability #Afghanistan,” he wrote, using an acronym for IS-K.

The Taliban regained control of Afghanistan three years ago and say their counterterrorism operations have since “almost decimated” IS-K in the country. However, U.S. officials and recent United Nations reports dispute the claims, identifying IS-K as a growing terrorism threat to the region and beyond.

Earlier this month, IS-K claimed a suicide bombing in the Afghan capital that killed six people. In May, the group took responsibility for an attack by gunmen in the central Bamiyan province that killed three Spanish tourists and their local translator. In March, IS-K claimed that it was behind an attack on a Moscow concert hall that killed 145 Russians.

Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid reiterated in a statement last week that “concerns raised by Western countries and institutions regarding the presence and escalating threat” of IS-K in Afghanistan were “unfounded and driven by propaganda.”

Mujahid claimed that “the entire Afghan territory remains firmly under the control of the Islamic Emirate, leaving no room for independent or external groups to operate.” The Taliban refer to their administration as the Islamic Emirate.

No country has officially recognized the Taliban government in Kabul, mainly because of human rights concerns and extensive restrictions the Islamist Taliban have placed on women’s access to education, work, and public life at large.
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HANOI, Vietnam — The death toll in the aftermath of a typhoon in Vietnam climbed to 233 on Friday as rescue workers recovered more bodies from areas hit by landslides and flash floods, state media reported.  

Flood waters from the swollen Red River in the capital, Hanoi, were beginning to recede, but many neighborhoods remained inundated and farther north experts were predicting it could still be days before any relief is in sight.  

Typhoon Yagi made landfall Saturday, starting a week of heavy rains that have triggered flash floods and landslides, particularly in Vietnam’s mountainous north.  

Across Vietnam, 103 people are still listed as missing and more than 800 have been injured.  

Most fatalities have come in the province of Lao Cai, where a flash flood swept away the entire hamlet of Lang Nu on Tuesday. Eight villagers turned up safe on Friday morning, telling others that they had left before the deluge, state-run VNExpress newspaper reported, but 48 others from Lang Nu have been found dead, and another 39 remain missing.   

Roads to Lang Nu have been badly damaged, making it impossible to bring in heavy equipment to aid in the rescue effort.  

Some 500 personnel with sniffer dogs are on hand, and in a visit to the scene on Thursday, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh promised they would not relent in their search for those still missing.  

“Their families are in agony,” Chinh said.  

Coffins were stacked near the disaster site in preparation for the worst, and villager Tran Thi Ngan mourned at a makeshift altar for family members she had lost.  

“It’s a disaster,” she told VTV news. “That’s the fate we have to accept.”  

In Cao Bang, another northern province bordering China, 21 bodies had been recovered by Friday, four days after a landslide pushed a bus, a car and several motorcycles into a small river, swollen with floodwaters. Ten more people remain missing.  

Experts say storms like Typhoon Yagi are getting stronger due to climate change, as warmer ocean waters provide more energy to fuel them, leading to higher winds and heavier rainfall.  

The effects of the typhoon, the strongest to hit Vietnam in decades, were also being felt across the region, with flooding and landslides in northern Thailand, Laos and northeastern Myanmar.  

In Thailand, 10 deaths have been reported due to flooding or landslides, and Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra flew to the north on Friday to visit affected people in the border town of Mae Sai. Thailand’s Department of Disaster Prevention and Mitigation warned of a continuing risk of flash floods in multiple areas through Wednesday, as new rain was expected to increase the Mekong River’s levels further.  

International aid has been flowing into Vietnam in the aftermath of Yagi, with Australia already delivering humanitarian supplies as part of $2 million in assistance.  

South Korea has also pledged $2 million in humanitarian aid, and the U.S. Embassy said Friday it would provide $1 million in support through the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID.   

“With more heavy rain forecast in the coming days, USAID’s disaster experts continue to monitor humanitarian needs in close coordination with local emergency authorities and partners on the ground,” the embassy said in a statement. “USAID humanitarian experts on the ground are participating in ongoing assessments to ensure U.S. assistance rapidly reaches populations in need.”  

The typhoon and ensuing heavy rains have damaged factories in northern provinces like Haiphong, home to electric car company VinFast, Apple parts suppliers and other electronic manufacturers, which could affect international supply chains, the Center for Strategic and International Studies said in a research note.  

“Though 95 percent of businesses operating in Haiphong were expected to resume some activity on September 10, repair efforts will likely lower output for the next weeks and months,” CSIS said. 
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