Taipei :

Several thousand pro-independence demonstrators rallied in Taiwan’s capital on Saturday to protest against Beijing’s “bullying” and called for a referendum on whether the self-ruled island should formally declare independence from China.

The rally, one of the largest seen on Taiwan this year, was organised by a group called Formosa Alliance founded six months ago, and the protesters gathered near the headquarters of President Tsai Ing-wen’s Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).

Kenny Chung, a spokesman for Formosa Alliance, described the turnout as “very successful”.

Relations with Beijing have deteriorated since Tsai came into office in 2016, with China suspecting that she wants to push for formal independence, a red line for Beijing.

China views Taiwan as a wayward province and has never renounced the use of force to bring democratic Taiwan under its control.  This year, China increased military and diplomatic pressure, conducting air and sea military exercises around the island and persuading three of the few governments still supporting Taiwan to drop their backing.

Protesters said Tsai’s government should push back against Beijing, and advocated a referendum on independence to avoid being “swallowed up”. Some carried placards bearing the message: “No more bullying; no more annexation”.

The next presidential election is not due until 2020, but the ruling DPP will draw some indication of support from island-wide local elections that are set to take place in late November.

Tsai said last week she will maintain the status quo with Beijing, but  she also vowed to boost Taiwan’s national security and said her government would not submit to Chinese suppression.

Beijing has already been irked by the Taiwanese government’s approval for a referendum next month to decide whether to enter future Olympics events as “Taiwan” rather than “Chinese Taipei”, the name agreed under a compromise struck in the late 1970s.

Dubai/Glendale, Aariz./Washington :

Saudi Arabia said on Saturday a missing journalist had died in a fight inside its Istanbul consulate and it had fired two senior officials over his death, an account President Donald Trump said was credible but US lawmakers found hard to believe.

Saudi Arabia’s acknowledgement that Jamal Khashoggi died in the consulate came after two weeks of denials it had anything to do with his disappearance, and followed growing demands from Western allies for an explanation of what happened.

His disappearance sparked a global outcry and prompted some US lawmakers to call for harsh action against Riyadh.

Saudi state media said King Salman had ordered the dismissal of two senior officials: Saud al-Qahtani, a royal court advisor seen as the right-hand man to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and deputy intelligence chief Ahmed Asiri, a statement on state media said.

Saudi Arabia provided no evidence to support its account of the circumstances that led to Khashoggi’s death and it was unclear whether Western allies would be satisfied with the Saudi version of events.

“I think it’s a good first step, it’s a big step. It’s a lot of people, a lot of people involved, and I think it’s a great first step,” Trump, who has made close ties with Saudi Arabia a centerpiece of his foreign policy, told reporters in Arizona.

“Saudi Arabia has been a great ally. What happened is unacceptable,” he said, adding he would speak with the crown prince.

Trump also emphasized Riyadh’s importance in countering regional rival Iran and the importance for American jobs of massive US arms sales to Saudi Arabia.

Some US lawmakers however were unpersuaded by Riyadh’s account.

“To say that I am skeptical of the new Saudi narrative about Mr. Khashoggi is an understatement,” said Republican US

Senator Lindsey Graham, a Trump ally who has been sharply critical of Saudi Arabia over the incident.

Trump said he would be working with Congress on next moves, but “I would prefer that we don’t use as retribution cancelling $110 billion worth of work, which means 6,00,000 jobs ... we need them as a counterbalance to Iran.”

Khashoggi, a critic of the crown prince who lived in the United States and was a Washington Post columnist, had led to mounting pressure from the West on Saudi Arabia to provide convincing answers.

He went missing after entering the consulate on October 2 to obtain documents for his upcoming marriage. Days later, Turkish officials said they believed he was killed in the building, an allegation Saudi Arabia had, until now, strenuously denied.

In a separate statement on Saturday, the Saudi public prosecutor said a fight broke out between Khashoggi and people who met him in the consulate, leading to his death.

“The investigations are still under way and 18 Saudi nationals have been arrested,” the statement said.

Turkish sources have told Reuters the authorities have an audio recording purportedly documenting Khashoggi’s murder inside the consulate. Turkish pro-government newspaper Yeni Safak has published what it said were details from the audio. It said Khashoggi’s torturers cut off his fingers during an interrogation and later beheaded and dismembered him.

Before the Saudi announcements, Trump said he might consider sanctions, although he has also appeared unwilling to distance himself too much from the Saudi leadership.

Other Western allies have yet to react to Riyadh’s explanation and a main question will be whether they believe Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who has painted himself as a reformer, has no culpability.

King Salman has handed the day-to-day running of Saudi Arabia to his son, commonly known as MbS.

But, the disappearance of Khashoggi has tarnished Prince Mohammed’s reputation and deepened questions about his leadership.

The growing crisis prompted the king to intervene, five sources with links to the Saudi royal family told Reuters.

The king also ordered the formation of a ministerial committee headed by the crown prince to restructure the general intelligence agency, state media said on Friday, suggesting MbS still retained wide-ranging authorities.

The White House said in a statement it would continue to press for “justice that is timely, transparent, and in accordance with all due process.”

Republican Senator Rand Paul tweeted: “We should also halt all military sales, aid and cooperation immediately. There must be a severe price for these actions by Saudi Arabia.” Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal told CNN the Saudi explanation “absolutely defies credibility” while Democratic Senator Jack Reed, the Ranking Member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said the Saudis were still not coming clean with the truth.

“This appears to have been a deliberate, planned act followed by a cover up,” he said in a statement. “You don’t bring 15 men and a bone saw to a fist fight with a 60 year old.” In an earlier rebuke to Riyadh, senior officials from several governments, including US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, executives from major companies, and international media commentators withdrew from a high-profile investment conference slated for later this month.

‘No orders to kill him’

Qahtani, 40, entered the royal court under the late King Abdullah but only rose to prominence after latching onto Prince Mohammed, becoming a rare confidante in his secretive inner circle.

Sources say Qahtani would regularly speak on behalf of the crown prince and has given direct orders to senior officials including in the country’s security apparatus.

People close to Khashoggi and the government said Qahtani had tried to lure the journalist back to Saudi Arabia after he moved to Washington a year ago fearing reprisals for his views.

In a Twitter thread from August 2017 asking his 1.35 million followers to flag accounts to include in a black list for monitoring, Qahtani wrote: “Do you think I make decisions without guidance? I am an employee and a faithful executor of the orders of my lord the king and my lord the faithful crown prince.”

In a tweet on Saturday, he thanked the king and crown prince for the “big confidence” they had in him.

The other dismissed official, Asiri had joined the Saudi military in 2002, according to Saudi media reports, serving as spokesman for a coalition backing Yemen’s ousted president after Prince Mohammed led Saudi Arabia into that country’s civil war in 2015. Asiri was named deputy chief of foreign intelligence by royal decree in April 2017.

The crown prince had no knowledge of the specific operation that resulted in Khashoggi’s death, a Saudi official familiar with the investigation said.

“There were no orders for them to kill him or even specifically kidnap him,” said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity. There was a standing order to bring critics of the kingdom back to the country, he added.

“MbS had no knowledge of this specific operation and certainly did not order a kidnapping or murder of anybody. He will have been aware of the general instruction to tell people to come back,” the official said.

The official said the whereabouts of Khashoggi’s body were unclear after it was handed over to a “local cooperator” but there was no sign of it at the consulate.

The public prosecutor’s statement did not specify where the operatives had put Khashoggi’s body or if they plan to inform the Turks. The Saudi official told Reuters, “We don’t know for certain what happened to the body.”

Saudi critics said it was obvious the authorities didn’t want to hand over Khashoggi’s body as it would reveal how badly he was tortured.

In Istanbul, Turkish prosecutors investigating Khashoggi’s disappearance questioned Turkish employees of the Saudi consulate on Friday. Turkish police searched a forest on Istanbul’s outskirts and a city near the Sea of Marmara for Khashoggi’s remains, two senior Turkish officials told Reuters.

Khashoggi’s Turkish fiancée, Hatice Cengiz, tweeted in Arabic: “The heart grieves, the eye tears, and with your separation we are saddened, my dear Jamal,” she said, also asking “#where is martyr Khashoggi’s body?”

Beijing :

The world’s longest sea bridge Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge will be thrown open for traffic on October 24, the authorities said on Saturday.

The 55-kilometer-long bridge, situated in the Lingdingyang waters of the Pearl River Estuary, will be the world’s longest sea bridge, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.

The construction of the multibillion-dollar bridge had begun in December 2009.

It will slash the travel time between Hong Kong and Zhuhai from three hours to just 30 minutes, further integrating the cities in the Pearl River Delta.

The bridge will be opened for traffic on October 24, the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge Authority said.

Earlier, lawmakers in Hong Kong warned that the bridge, which provides a direct link to Hong Kong International Airport, could bring extra traffic to Lantau Island, and cause congestion, South China Morning Post said in a report.

The Transport Department has already capped the number of permits for cross-border private cars at 5,000, it said.

A government-commissioned study from 2016 estimated that 29,100 vehicles would use the bridge daily, by 2030, which was 12 per cent down from a report written in 2008.

Washington :
US President Donald Trump has praised Montana Republican Representative Greg Gianforte for assaulting a reporter during his campaign last May and called him "my guy".

"Any guy who can do a body slam ... he's my guy," Trump said at a Montana rally on Thursday night and made a gesture mimicking a body slam, according to CNN.

"I shouldn't say this," but "there's nothing to be embarrassed about," the President said amid laughter and applause from the crowd.

Gianforte pleaded guilty to misdemeanour assault in June 2017 after he was convicted of "body slamming" The Guardian reporter Ben Jacobs.

A judge sentenced him to a 180-day deferred sentence, 40 hours of community service, 20 hours of anger management and a $300 fine along with a $85 court fee.

Trump said he found out about Gianforte assaulting a reporter when he was travelling in Rome and said initially he was concerned it would hurt the Republican in the election.

"Then I said, well wait a minute, I know Montana pretty well, I think it might help him. And it did." He called Gianforte, "one of the most respected people in Congress" and a "tough cookie".

Gianforte won the election the next day and apologized to Jacobs during his acceptance speech.

Guardian US editor John Mulholland slammed Trump's joke, saying: "To celebrate an attack on a journalist who was simply doing his job is an attack on the First Amendment by someone who has taken an oath to defend it."

Taliban says attack targeted top US commander

Kandahar (Afghanistan) :

A powerful Afghan police chief and a journalist were among at least three people killed on Thursday when a gunman opened fire on a high-level security meeting attended by top US commander General Scott Miller, officials said.

At least 12 people were wounded, including three Americans and a provincial governor, in the Taliban-claimed attack that comes two days before Afghanistan’s long-delayed parliamentary elections. Miller was not hurt.
The Taliban said the attack had targeted top US commander General Scott Miller, who NATO said survived the shooting.

“The target was General Miller and General Raziq,” Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said on Twitter.

Abdul Raziq, the police chief in the southern province of Kandahar, was killed in the attack, Afghan officials said.

Security forces swarmed the southern city of Kandahar after the shooting that shuttered shops and sent terrified civilians—already on high alert for attacks—into their homes.

Condemning the horrific terror attacks in Kandahar, Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted, "Deeply shocked and saddened by the dastardly terrorist attack in Kandahar. India condemns it most strongly and mourns with our Afghan brethren the loss of life, including that of Kandahar's senior leadership. We stand in solidarity with the brave people of Afghanistan in  fighting terrorism imposed on them."

The Taliban said Miller and General Abdul Raziq—the police chief of Kandahar province who had a fierce reputation for brutality—were the targets of the shooting.

“General Raziq and the provincial NDS (intelligence agency) chief have been killed, and the governor himself is in a critical condition,” a senior government official told AFP on the condition of anonymity.

Six of Raziq’s bodyguards and two intelligence officers also were wounded in the attack that was carried out by one of the governor’s security personnel, the official said.

The shooter had been killed, he added.

An Afghan journalist working for state media also died, media support group NAI said in a statement.

An Afghan security official told AFP the attack happened as the officials, including Miller, were leaving the meeting.

Miller was not hurt in the shooting, NATO’s Resolute Support mission spokesman Colonel Knut Peters said in a statement.

Three Americans, including a soldier, civilian and contractor, were wounded in the cross-fire and had been evacuated from the scene.

“Initial reports indicate this was an Afghan-on-Afghan incident,” Peters said.

“We are being told the area is secure.”

A hospital official told AFP that several senior officials had been brought to the medical facility, but they would not provide further details.         

Another witness said the city was “full of military forces”.

“They don’t allow anyone to come out of their houses,” he told AFP.

Raziq, an anti-Taliban strongman, was widely seen as a bulwark against the insurgency in Kandahar, the militant group’s birthplace, and had previously survived multiple assassination attempts.

He long controlled the province with an iron hand and was accused of running secret torture chambers, an allegation he denied.

Afghanistan is tense ahead of the October 20 legislative election after the Taliban pledged to attack the ballot.

More than 2,500 candidates are competing for 249 seats in the lower house, including doctors, mullahs, and the sons of former warlords.

The election process has already been marred by bloody violence, with hundreds killed or wounded in recent months.

At least 10 candidates have been killed so far, including Abdul Jabar Qahraman who was blown up Wednesday by a bomb placed under his sofa in the southern province of Helmand.

The election is seen as a rehearsal for the presidential vote scheduled for April and an important milestone ahead of a UN meeting in Geneva in November where Afghanistan is under pressure to show progress on “democratic processes”.