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Ukraine urges India to rethink ‘Soviet legacy’ of Russia ties

Stay informed with free updates Simply sign up to the War in Ukraine myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox. India’s close ties with Russia are based on a “Soviet legacy” that is “evaporating”, Ukraine’s foreign minister warned as he urged New Delhi to stand by Kyiv. On a visit to the India, Dmytro Kuleba also said it should be concerned about Russia’s deepening ties with China, which is locked in a tense border conflict with its southern neighbour India.  Speaking to the Financial Times, Kuleba said “the co-operation…

Rohingya activists call for more control of aid money

Rohingya Muslim activists representing fellow refugees forced out of Myanmar and into “prison-like” camps in Bangladesh said in Washington on Thursday that foreign aid to the camps would go further if some of it was given directly to refugee-run groups. But a representative of the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, said little money was left over after aid cuts that currently see the refugees provided with only $10 worth of food a month. About 90% of the 1.2 million Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh struggled to have “acceptable food…

Desperate farmers in North Korea steal insulating plastic film from each other

It’s planting season in North Korea, and farmers are stealing plastic film from each other so that they can protect their rice seedlings from frost as they worry about meeting their quotas, residents told Radio Free Asia. The plastic film and other farm supplies such as fertilizer are in short supply as imports from China have not picked up after the shutdown in trade during the COVID-19 pandemic. “In rural areas of our country, where farming material shortages are chronic, the number of thieves of plastic film from farms increases…

16 Indians rescued from scam operations in Laos

Sixteen Indian nationals who said they were lured in Mumbai to work as online scammers in Laos were rescued this week from the Chinese-run Golden Triangle Special Economic Zone, an official with knowledge of the situation told Radio Free Asia on Friday. The zone, which sits along the Mekong River in northwestern Bokeo province, is a gambling and tourism hub catering to Chinese tourists and has been described as a de-facto Chinese colony.  It has become a haven for cyber scams, prostitution, money laundering, drug trafficking, and human and wildlife…

How Taiwan Breaches Censors’ Barriers

Breaking the barriers of censorship in China, Myanmar and North Korea is a daunting task, as these countries have built almost impenetrable firewalls against outside news and information. But Radio Taiwan International is successfully using shortwave radio to break through. “We potentially have 70 million to 1.2 billion listeners who rely on shortwave to get information [from] outside of their country,” said Isis Lee, RTI’s vice president. On the air since 1928, RTI say their mission is to bring listeners stories they won’t or can’t hear or see on television,…

South China Sea: Beijing urges Southeast Asian nations to ‘cherish peace’ and help stop tensions spiralling out of control

“People in East Asian countries should be aware of and cherish the three-decade-long regional peace since the end of the Cold War, and efforts should be spared to prevent new conflicts from emerging in the South China Sea,” Liu told a panel discussion about the disputed waterway. China’s special envoy for climate change Liu Zhenmin addresses a panel discussion at the Boao Forum. Photo: Xinhua He also warned: “The past year has witnessed closer military cooperation among the United States, Japan and the Philippines. Many are concerned that this would…

AI boom drives global stock markets to best first quarter in five years

Stay informed with free updates Simply sign up to the Equities myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox. Global stock markets have recorded their best first-quarter performance in five years, buoyed by hopes of a soft economic landing in the US and enthusiasm about artificial intelligence. An MSCI index of worldwide stocks has gained 7.7 per cent this year, the most since 2019, with stocks outperforming bonds by the biggest margin in any quarter since 2020, even as traders scale back their expectations for rapid interest rate cuts. The…

Americans studying in China are safe despite US travel advisory, scholars say

American students in China have not experienced significant threats to their safety, and the US State Department must make its travel advisory for the country more specific, scholars said on Thursday. “There are people for whom going to China is risky [but] they don’t tend to be students or scholars,” said Deborah Seligsohn, an assistant professor of political science at Villanova University, during a launch event at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies for a new report on US-China scholarly “recoupling”. “And so we need a more specific travel…

China to Drive World Economic Recovery, Says a Top Communist Official

Brushing off domestic economic headwinds, a top Communist Party official said Thursday that China aims to drive the world’s recovery this year by pushing forward reforms and making tech innovation a new point of growth. The remarks from Zhao Leji, who chairs the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, come as foreign investment in the country is falling and it grapples with issues that include high youth unemployment, ballooning debt and a crisis in the property market. Speaking to businesspeople and other leaders at the Boao Forum for Asia,…

2 Vietnamese bloggers charged for criticizing death penalty case

Vietnamese authorities on Thursday arrested and charged two Facebook bloggers for “abusing democratic freedoms to infringe the interests of the state” for posting comments about the handling of a case of a death row inmate, Vietnamese media reported.  The Security Investigation Agency of the Binh Duong provincial police charged Nguyen Duc Du and Hoang Quoc Viet under Article 331 of Vietnam’s Penal Code, saying their social media posts about death row inmate Ho Duy Hai being unjustly sentenced had insulted judiciary agencies.  Their cases bring to five the number of…