South Korea’s president pardons Samsung's heir

The other news of the day: China and Nepal agree on building trans-Himalayan roads and railways. Former NagaWorld Casino staff protest in Cambodia. Well-known mullah Sheikh Rahimullah Haqqani is killed in Afghanistan. Doubts remain about the pope's trip to Lebanon. Russia’s population continues to shrink.

SOUTH KOREA

Lee Jae-yong, Samsung vice president and heir, received a presidential pardon. He spent the past two and a half years in prison in connection with a corruption case that involved former President Park Geun-hye. Former President Lee Myung-bak, who was convicted for taking bribes, was not among the 1,691 people pardoned.

CHINA – NEPAL

China and Nepal have agreed to build the Trans-Himalayan Multidimensional Connectivity Network. The project is part of China's Belt and Road Initiative and involves the construction of railways and other communication routes between the two countries.

CAMBODIA

Former workers from the NagaWorld Casino continue their protest. Yesterday, about a hundred, mostly women, clashed with the police in Phnom Penh. The demonstrators, who are among 1,300 people fired in December, are demanding their job back and adequate compensation.

AFGHANISTAN

Sheikh Rahimullah Haqqani was killed in a suicide attack yesterday. The high-profile cleric was in his office when the attacker set off a bomb inside his artificial leg. The Afghan chapter of the Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the murder. Although a supporter of the Taliban, Haqqani was known for backing women's education, which the current regime opposes.

LEBANON

The pope will visit Lebanon when the Vatican deems it “beneficial for Lebanon,” this according to Archbishop Joseph Spiteri, who leaves the post of apostolic nuncio in Lebanon to take up the same position in Mexico. The Vatican diplomat added that the pontiff is in constant contact with various states regarding Lebanon’s domestic crisis.

RUSSIA

According to Rosstat, Russia’s Federal State Statistics Service, the country’s population now  numbers 142.7 million inhabitants (plus two million in Crimea), a drop of 430,000 between January and May. The decline is much worse than in 2021, when the total loss was about one million.

UKRAINE

In the last two weeks, more than 20 parishes have left the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate (UOC-MP) to join the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (UAOC). About 1,200 out of 12,000 communities have shifted from one jurisdiction to the other, especially in the Khmelnytskyi Oblast (region).

• south korea
• china
• nepal
• cambodia
• afghanistan
• lebanon
• russia
• ukraine