China censors photo of two female athletes over unintentional Tiananmen reference

Today's news: India has asked Canadian diplomats to leave;  Pakistan wants to expel 1.7 million Afghan refugees; Three Indonesian arms manufacturers allegedly selling weapons to Myanmar. In Thailand, a 14-year-old boy was arrested on suspicion of a shooting. Tajikistan cuts power 'in preparation for winter'.

CHINA

Beijing censored a photo of Chinese athletes embracing each other wrapped in the Chinese flag at the end of a race because in the image the numbers on their shorts, 6 and 4, appear close together and are seen as an inadvertent reference to the Tiananmen Square massacre of 4 June 1989. Lin Yuwei and Wu Yanni had embraced a few days ago after Lin's victory in the 100 meters hurdles at the Asian Games in Hangzhou.

INDIA – CANADA

Relations between India and Canada continue to be tense after Ottawa's accusations of involvement of the Indian intelligence services in the killing of a Sikh activist and Canadian citizen considered a terrorist by Delhi: India has asked Canada to withdraw 40 diplomatic staff, saying that if they were to stay beyond October 10 they would lose diplomatic immunity.

AFGHANISTAN – PAKISTAN

The Pakistani government has ordered all unauthorized Afghan asylum seekers - around 1.7 million people - to leave the country by November 1. "If they don't leave... then all the law enforcement agencies of the provinces or the federal government will be used to expel them," Interior Minister Sarfraz Bugti said. Another 1.3 million Afghans in Pakistan have refugee status.

THAILAND

After an armed attack in a shopping mall in Bangkok, in which two people, one from China and one from Myanmar, were killed and five others were injured, Thai security forces arrested a 14-year-old suspect. According to the police, before the shooting the boy had suffered a psychological breakdown and had modified a gun to be able to fire blanks.

INDONESIA – MYANMAR

Activist groups have filed a complaint with Indonesia's National Human Rights Commission alleging that three domestic arms manufacturers sold weapons to Myanmar following the February 2021 coup that started the civil war. The weapons arrived via a Burmese company called True North, owned by the son of an army minister, say the Chin Human Rights Organization and the Myanmar Accountability Project.

TAJIKISTAN

Although we are still far from the winter season, in Tajikistan the authorities in some regions have already begun to disconnect electricity for a few hours a day, without any official warning having been issued. Some service stations have had to resort to autonomous electric generators, which consume 15 liters of liquid gas a day, and many citizens have begun to collect wood to fuel the stoves.

RUSSIA - UKRAINE

The advisor to the Patriarch of Moscow, Protoierej Nikolai Balashov, expressed the solidarity of the Russian Orthodox with the Patriarch of Jerusalem Theophilus III, who proposed during a visit to Rome to help achieve peace in Ukraine through a conciliar gathering of the Churches, to overcome divisions within world Orthodoxy.

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