CHINA - UNITED STATES
Donald Trump announced extra 10% tariffs on imports of Chinese products (and an extra 25% from Canada and Mexico). This will be one of the first executive orders upon taking office, the president-elect threatens, in response to ‘drug trafficking, particularly fentanyl, and the entry of undocumented migrants’. The US and China have a trade volume of about $600 billion; Beijing's immediate retort is that ‘no one will win a trade war or a tariff war’.
IRAQ
The population has increased to 45.4 million. This is what emerges from the preliminary results announced yesterday by Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, linked to the census held last week. This was the first nationwide count in almost 30 years and represents a crucial step for future policy. Prior to the survey, the population was estimated at 43 million.
VIETNAM
Recently reappeared after four months of silence Thich Minh Tue, whose real name is Le Anh Tu but has become famous by the nickname ‘wandering monk’, reportedly wrote a letter stating that he renounced his vow of poverty. However, acquaintances and supporters question its authenticity and accuse the authorities of wanting to isolate him from the public. His ascetic life and walking pilgrimages had made him famous, attracting the attentions of Hanoi, which blocked him.
BANGLADESH
Police detained a prominent Hindu monk who had led protests calling for protection for the minority in the Muslim-majority country. Chinmoy Krishna Das Brahmachari, spokesman of a newly formed group that has been demonstrating condemning ‘atrocities’ against his brethren, was arrested in Dhaka amid rising confessional tensions since the fall of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.
SOUTH KOREA - JAPAN
After boycotting one organised by Tokyo, Seoul yesterday held a memorial event for compatriots forced to work in a Japanese mine during World War II, an issue that is still sensitive despite improved relations. The South Korean decision is linked to anticipations that the Japanese government was represented by an official who had visited a shrine ‘symbolic’ of the Rising Sun's militarist past.
RUSSIA - UKRAINE
The Russians are also persecuting Jehovah's Witnesses in the occupied cross-border areas of Ukraine. They also do so with demonstrative actions such as in the Lugansk region, where the letters posted ‘in an action of patriotic education’ were removed from the wall of one of their halls and then displayed in a ‘museum of glory’ in Solnečnogorsk as ‘war trophies for traditional values’.
PAKISTAN - TAJIKISTAN - CHINA
Chinese citizens have been attacked or even killed in recent months in Pakistan and Tajikistan, two countries in which China invests billions of dollars for social and economic development projects. Hence the growing fear that Beijing may in retaliation reduce or block this funding, as Frud Bežan writes on Radio Azattyk.
