Fear of protests as Bangkok decides on Prayut's term of office

Today's headlines: A possible meeting between Putin and Xi Jinping in Uzbekistan in mid-September; Japan grants refugee status to 98 Afghans; After two years of closure due to the pandemic, Manila students sent home on first day of school beacuse of typhoon alert; Israel opens Ramon airport to overseas flights for Palestinians. 

THAILAND

Security measures have been tightened around the residence of Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha in Bangkok, while a court is considering whether to grant a petition to decide when his eight-year term of office expires  under the Constitution. The main opposition party and nearly two-thirds of Thais polled in an opinion poll believe the prime minister, who came to power in a coup in 2014, must step down by 24 August because his time as junta chief must be counted in his term.

CHINA-INDIA

China announced the reopening of visas for Indian students, suspended for two years due to the Covid-19 pandemic. More than 20,000 Indian medical students, who returned home in January 2020 when Covid-19 cases had started to rise sharply in the country, had so far been unable to return to China to complete their studies due to Beijing's strict policies to contain the spread of the disease and the absence of direct flights.

JAPAN

Japan has officially granted refugee status to 98 people who have fled Afghanistan since the Taliban returned to power last year. This is a rare move for a country that is very reluctant to grant political asylum: in the whole of 2021, Japan took in a total of only 74 refugees, of which only nine were Afghans. Until now, people who fled to Tokyo from Kabul - mostly related to embassy staff - had only been granted temporary permits lasting three months.

PHILIPPINES

Filipino students were able to return to school yesterday after the very long suspension of classes in attendance due to the pandemic - which lasted for two years - today President Bongbong Marcos has already decreed a new suspension of classes in Manila and other districts due to the arrival of tropical storm 'Florita'. The emergency is expected to end tomorrow evening.

UZBEKISTAN-RUSSIA-CHINA

The leaders of Russia and China, Putin and Xi Jinping, are planning to meet in person at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, on 15-16 September. It would be the Chinese president's first trip abroad since the start of the pandemic, and the heads of state and government of India, Turkey, Pakistan and Iran could also be there.

ISRAEL-PALESTINE

For the first time, a group of 43 Palestinian passengers flew to Cyprus from Ramon airport in southern Israel, as part of a pilot programme apparently aimed at allowing Palestinians to fly abroad without having to travel to Amman. Israel presented the move as an effort to improve living conditions for Palestinians, but critics note that these measures do not address the root of the problem of occupation or pave the way for the creation of a Palestinian state.

ARMENIA-RUSSIA

Numerous pro-Russian propaganda posters with the Putin Z were put up on the streets of Yerevan supporting the annexation of occupied areas of Ukraine and 'post-Soviet territories' to Russia' listing Crimea in Armenian, the Donbass, Mariupol, Kherson, and Zaporozhje, but also Tiraszpol in Transnistria, Tskhinval in South Ossetia, northern Kazakhstan, 'and even Artsakh [Nagorno Karabakh] had better be Russian'.

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