Canberra fears a military agreement between China and the Solomon Islands

Today's headlines: China's foreign minister meets his Indian counterpart; a Vietnamese man attempts crossing to India in rubber dingy to join wife; in Ukraine an Uzbek restaurateur offers free meals to fighters; Asean envoy says the situation in Myanmar will not be resolved soon; in Lebanon Christian politician Samir Geagea is accused of violence.

CHINA - SOLOMON ISLANDS

Australia fears that China may conclude a security agreement with the Solomon Islands: according to drafts leaked to news agencies, Beijing would like to establish a military base on the archipelago, about 2,000 km from Canberra. The Solomon Islands government has since confirmed the news.

INDIA - CHINA

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi is to hold a surprise meeting with his Indian counterpart Subrahmanyam Jaishankar today, before flying to Nepal. Relations between India and China had cooled after clashes along the border in June 2020. Delhi and Beijing have maintained similar positions towards Russia after the Ukrainian invasion.

THAILAND

A Vietnamese man who tried to row a rubber dinghy to India was rescued yesterday by the Thai navy near the Similan Islands. Ho Hoang Hung, 37, was trying to cross the Bay of Bengal to join his wife who works in India. He says they had not seen each other for two years because of the pandemic. When he arrived in Bangkok he found out he needed a visa for India, so he decided to try to row more than 2,000 kilometres.

MYANMAR

Cambodian Foreign Minister Prak Sokhonn said yesterday that Myanmar's civil war would take a long time to resolve because "the parties involved were not ready to cooperate and still insist on fighting and eliminating each other". In a three-day visit as Asean envoy Sokhon met Burmese generals but was not allowed to meet the country's former leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

SOUTH KOREA

Yesterday Park Geun-hye, South Korea's former president and daughter of former dictator Park Chung-hee, left the hospital where she was admitted and returned home after nearly five years in prison. Park, 70, had been accused of corruption in 2017 and was forced to leave office.

LEBANON

A military court charged Christian politician Samir Geagea with causing the violent clashes in Beirut last October. Geagea, a strong critic of Hezbollah, claims the charges are politically motivated. Lebanon's presidential elections are two months away.

RUSSIA - UKRAINE

The Russian armed forces that partially occupy the city of Mariupol are forcibly deporting thousands of Ukrainian citizens to Russian territory, according to the city council, which estimates that over 15,000 inhabitants have already been taken away by bus.

UKRAINE

The Uzbek cook Shakhobiddin Jusipov, who has been in Kharkiv for 25 years, where he opened the Asian cuisine restaurant "Nawruz", is becoming a local hero: known to everyone as "Shak", he has been offering free hot meals to Ukrainian doctors and fighters for days. The restaurant building has miraculously remained standing, even though it is under fire from the Russians.