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Hong Kong, China – Hong Kong ’s political standoff continued on Monday as protesters blocked roads and clashed with police ahead of a planned mass protest on the anniversary of the city’s return to mainland China . Police used pepper spray in an attempt to disperse protesters gathering around Hong Kong’s Central Government Offices (CGO) complex early in the morning, after the demonstrators used re-purposed crowd control barriers to block  several streets leading to the site.  The dawn protests, which follow several weeks of demonstrations over a controversial extradition bill that would allow suspects to be sent to the mainland for trial, come as the former British territory prepares to celebrate its Special Administrative Region Establishment Day, marking its return to Chinese rule in 1997.  Less than a kilometre from the unrest, the local government continued its preparations for a ceremony to mark the handover at Golden Bauhinia Square, behind water-filled barric...

Gunmen have opened fire on the convoy of a Lebanese minister in a mountain village near Beirut, killing two of his guards and wounding another, in what he called an assassination attempt. Saleh al-Gharib, the minister of state handling refugee issues, told local TV he was heading to the mountain village of Qabr Shamoun when his convoy came under fire on Sunday. “What happened was an armed ambush and a clear assassination attempt,” al-Gharib said in an interview with Lebanon ‘s al-Jadeed TV. Gharib is a member of a party allied with Hezbollah and supportive of the Syrian government, and has close ties with pro-Syrian Druze leader Talal Arslan. “Despite bloodshed, we are working to calm the situation,” al-Gharib told Lebanese newspaper Annahar. Lebanese state news agency NNA reported that the violence erupted in 30km southeast of Beirut, where followers of the Lebanese Progressive Socialist Party (PSP), a vocal critic of the Syrian government, had blocked a road to prevent Foreign...

Palestinians have condemned the attendance of two  United States officials at the inauguration of a tunnel at a contested archaeological site in occupied East Jerusalem  that was organised by an Israeli settler-linked group. White House adviser Jason Greenblatt and Ambassador to  Israel  David Friedman took part in Sunday’s event, which marked the completion of the project next to the Old City in the neighbourhood of Silwan, according to the group, the City of David Foundation. In a statement, the Palestinian Foreign Ministry said it viewed “the American attendance and celebration of the Judaisation activities in occupied East Jerusalem as hostile acts against the Palestinians”. “The administration of President Donald Trump proves day by day its … unlimited affiliation to the colonial settlement project led by the extremist right in the state of the occupation (Israel),” it said. Israel occupied East Jerusalem in the 1967 war and later annexed it in a move...

Relatives of Alan Kurdi, the two-year-old Syrian boy whose drowning while trying to reach Europe in 2015 shook consciences around the world, have objected to a new film about the toddler. The boy perished in September 2015, along with his mother Rehanna and four-year-old brother Ghalib, when their small rubber boat capsized in the Aegean Sea while attempting to reach  Greece  after f leeing the war in  Syria . The heartbreaking photo of the boy’s lifeless tiny body, face down on a beach in Turkey, sparked a deep emotional reaction and became a rallying point for activists and others to offer assistance in Syria’s  refugee crisis . It also pushed the  European Union  to temporarily open its borders to  Syrian refugees . Tima Kurdi, an aunt of the boy, told the told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in an article published on Friday that no one had asked the family’s permission to make the new movie about her nephew. “I’m really ...

US President Donald Trump  and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un have each stepped over the border at the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) that divides the Korean Peninsula, after shaking hands on Sunday. With the highly symbolic gesture, Trump became the first sitting US president to set foot on North Korean soil. What originally was intended to be an impromptu exchange of pleasantries turned into a 50-minute meeting, another historic first in the yearlong rapprochement between the two nations, which are still technically at war with each other. It marks a return to face-to-face contact between the leaders after talks broke down during a summit in Vietnam in February. Trump announced afterward that the two nations had agreed to resume discussions in the coming weeks. Significant doubts remain, though, about the future of the negotiations and the North’s willingness to give up its stockpile of nuclear weapons. “Stepping across that line was a great honour,” Trump said at a joint new...

Egypt ‘s former presidential candidate Abdul Moneim Aboul Fotouh has suffered two heart attacks in prison, his son said, adding his father may die there because of the harsh conditions under which he is held. Aboul Fotouh’s son, Ahmed, wrote on Facebook on Saturday his father, who is a leading opposition figure, may succumb to the “deliberate” abuse in Cairo’s Torah prison “at any time”. A former member of the Muslim Brotherhood  and leader of the centrist Strong Egypt Party, Aboul Fotouh ran as an independent candidate in the 2012 presidential elections, gaining nearly a fifth of the vote in the first round. Aboul Fotouh was detained in February 2018, ahead of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s re-election, on charges of being part of a banned group, unspecified by Egypt’s prosecution, but widely believed to be the Brotherhood. He is also being accused of spreading false news. “Today, while we were waiting to visit him, he had a heart attack,” Ahmed Aboul Fotouh said on Fa...

Israel has detained and questioned the Palestinian minister for Jerusalem affairs, Israeli police have said. Palestine ‘s Minister for Jerusalem Affairs Fadi al-Hadami was detained for “activities in Jerusalem”, Israeli police spokesperson Micky Rosenfeld told AFP on Sunday. Palestinian media reported that Israeli police had arrested al-Hadami from his home in Jerusalem in the early hours of Sunday morning, after searching the premises. The sources said five other Palestinian men were also arrested on Sunday, from areas across Jerusalem, Bethlehem and south of Hebron in the occupied West Bank. The detainees identified by Palestinian media included Haydar and Alaa Dirbas who were arrested at the Maqasid Hospital in Occupied East Jerusalem, and Ihab Saeed who was arrested from his village near Jerusalem.  The Israeli authorities did not comment on why the men were arrested. Hadami meets Chile’s president  A source close to the minister told AFP that al-Hadami’s arrest i...