ASIA TODAY The Pope calls for peace in Gaza in the Vatican Gardens ten years after the meeting of presidents

News of the day: One in five Nepalese youth in Hong Kong has been sent back to Nepal by their parents due to financial problems. Beijing sends water from Tibet to the Maldives, but rations it to Lhasa. A new 10-storey apartment block in Tokyo will be demolished because it obscures Mount Fuji. Tensions in the Abkhazian Orthodox Church with clerics demanding a Russian bishop.

VATICAN-ISRAEL-PALESTINE

Pope Francis met last night to the Israeli and Palestinian ambassadors in the Vatican Gardens to pray for an end to the war in Gaza, marking the 10th anniversary of a similar meeting with the Israeli and Palestinian presidents with a new call for peace. “Every day I pray that this war ends,” Francis told the small assembly, which also included a group of cardinals and the Holy See’s diplomatic corps. Among them were Israeli Ambassador Raphael Schutz and Palestinian Ambassador Issa Kassissieh, as well as representatives of Italy’s Jewish and Muslim communities.

HONG KONG-NEPAL

One in five young Nepalis in Hong Kong has been returned to Nepal by their parents, in most cases against their will. This was reported by the NGO Hong Kong Unison, highlighting an alarming school dropout rate among the ethnic minority community. 40% of those surveyed cited financial difficulties, as parents can no longer afford their children’s education. On the other hand, some young Nepalese girls were expelled because their parents disapproved of their love life.

CHINA-MALDIVES

China donated 3,000 tons of glacial water from Tibet to the Maldives in two different batches in March and May, in the same months in which he presented and applied regulations that restricted the use of water in his country. The Maldives – which maintains strong bilateral relations with China and is a beneficiary of the Belt and Road Initiative – thanked the Tibetan people for the “generous donation”, which is expected to be of great help to the island communities. However, Tibetans in interior Tibet said they themselves are facing water shortages because Chinese authorities have launched systematic water conservation and management campaigns in several Tibetan villages and towns for more than a decade.

JAPAN

A 10-story apartment building in the western part of the Tokyo metropolis, almost ready for occupancy, will be demolished because it blocks the view of Mount Fuji. The “Gurandomezon Kunitachi Fujimi-dori” skyscraper, located in the Naka district of Kunitachi City, is about a 10-minute walk from Kunitachi Station. The construction of the apartment building had long been the subject of bitter debate: Neighborhood residents repeatedly expressed concern about the impact the building would have on the view of the 3,776-meter-high Mount Fuji and exposure to the sunlight from homes in the area.

PAKISTAN-UNITED STATES

The United States delivered one of the biggest surprises in recent cricket history by beating Pakistan -one of the powers of this sport- in the T20 World Cup that is being held in the United States. Sports success is also a symbol of the rise of immigrants of Asian origin in the US: of the eleven players on the national team, five are of Indian origin and two are Pakistanis, as well as three are British. A circumstance that has caused memes about H-1b visas and Indian engineers in Silicon Valley to swarm across social networks in South Asia.

ORTHODOX

The oldest and most influential priest of the Orthodox Church of Abkhazia, Father Vissarion Aplija, has called on Patriarch Kirill of Moscow to accept the Abkhazians under his jurisdiction and appoint a Russian bishop in Sukhumi, provoking very mixed reactions among clerics and faithful, hitherto members of the Georgian Church.

RUSSIA-CHINA

The Russian Minister for the Development of the Far East, Aleksej Čekunkov, declares that several private companies from India and China have agreed to invest in the construction “at a very high level of quality” of the satellite city to be built next to Vladivostok, which will be will be called Sputnik (“satellite”), where a campus for Chinese students will also be opened.