Today’s news: a Chinese evangelical Christian has been in police custody for two weeks; Pyongyang Fires Another Two Ballistic Missiles; a new shipping company connects Pakistan with Oman through Qatar; Burmese and Thai Catholic volunteers help displaced people staying in the border area; several Russian oligarchs subjected to sanctions have reportedly accumulated hundreds of millions in capital abroad.
IRAQ
The new government got Parliament’s vote of confidence during the session held last night. With the green light from the deputies, the executive led by Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, 52, and made up of 21 ministers, marks the end of a year of stagnation. However, there are many challenges on the horizon. The head of the state-owned South Gas Co. (SGC), Hayan Abdul Ghani, heads the Oil Ministry.
KOREA
Pyongyang fired this morning two ballistic missiles short-range aircraft (SRBM) off the eastern coast. This was reported by sources in the South Korean military, which is about to conclude a two-week military exercise – a deterrent to the North, it seems. The launch sounds a new alarm over a possible nuclear test by the Kim regime; the last one was in 2017.
PAKISTAN – OMAN – QATAR
In the last days it started to work the Gulf-Pakistan Express service, a new shipping company linking the port of Karachi (Pakistan) with Hamad (Qatar) and Sohar in Oman. The new weekly service will offer more opportunities for direct trade between countries, on a regular basis and with faster and cheaper transit.
CHINA
Chen Wensheng, a leading figure in the evangelical community in Hunan province, has been in police custody since October 12. The authorities took him away on the eve of the 20th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party to prevent him from praying in the streets and preaching the Gospel. Apparently he and his wife are in a mountainous area, officially “on vacation.”
MYANMAR – THAILAND
Volunteers from the Burmese Diocese of Hpa-an and the Thai Diocese of Chiang Mai are developing humanitarian operations along the Salouen River, bringing food and medicine to displaced families and refugees in the Myanmar jungle on the other side of the border. There are at least 1.3 million people who have fled their homes – more than a million since 2021, after the military coup.
RUSSIA
According to a report from Moscow Times, several sanctioned Putin oligarchs, including Ališer Usmanov, Sergei Čemezov and presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov himself, have managed to save hundreds of millions of euros in foreign capital. All this thanks to a network offshore organized by the Bridgewaters company in the Isle of Man, British and with an autonomous government.
TURKMENISTAN
The President of Turkmenistan, Serdar Berdymukhamedov, complained about “excessively long cotton harvest times”. A warning that follows the example of his father and his predecessor, who every year around this time spurred the regions to carry out forced labor for the production of so-called “white gold” and dismissed several high-ranking officials of local administrations with demonstrative purposes.
