CARRIE LAM APOLOGISES AGAIN
Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam has apologised a second time for her handling of the controversial extradition bill that prompted mass protests, promising not to restart the process as long as there remains conflict about it.
Will that be enough for protesters? Unlikely. Activists had been demanding a complete retraction of the legislation out of fear that the process could be restarted any time. Others had asked for the chief executive to resign, a promise not to prosecute protesters as rioters and punishment for police - requests that the government is unlikely to accede to. At any rate, the protesters are far from a homogenous bunch - no group of this size can be - and it may well be not everyone wants the same thing.
What now? A lot of attention will be paid to what happens this weekend and what the turnout will be. The government will likely be hoping that they've done enough to make the protests start to dwindle.
Go deeper:
I offer my most sincere apology to all the people of Hong Kong: Chief Executive Carrie Lam
No successor in sight if HK leader Carrie Lam quits
Further reading: A special report from our correspondents Claire Huang and Elizabeth Law on the protests in Hong Kong and the extradition bill that sparked it of
INSIDE JOB
For all the coffeeshop talk about the sex video scandal centred on Malaysian Economic Affairs Minister Azmin Ali was an inside job by a political rival in his own party, the party has - until now - kept a relatively united front. Asked today if he was convinced the leak of the video was an inside job, Mr Azmin said: "I am convinced".
Why it matters: Mr Azmin's remarks effectively ramp up tensions in an already tense party. By publicly declaring he believes he was targeted by someone within the party, he is also publicly declaring that he is going to do something about it. And with all the rumours about the culprits focused on the faction within the party supportive of would-be prime minister Anwar Ibrahim, PKR is a party that seems not big enough for the two of them.
Go deeper:
Malaysian minister Azmin accuses his PKR rivals of being behind gay sex video
NZ MAN JAILED FOR DISTRIBUTING SHOOTING VIDEO
A 44-year-old man has been sentenced to 21 months in jail for sharing a video of the Christchurch terror attack that killed 51 people in two mosques. He is the first to be dealt with distributing the video, which authorities had classified as objectionable material shortly after the attack - making it an offence to share it.
The details: The 44-year-old admitted that the day after the mosque killings, he had sent away the video to have it modified with cross-hairs and a "kill count," and distributed the unmodified video to 30 people. In court, when asked by the judge what he thought of the video, the man said it was "awesome".
The full story: New Zealand man sentenced to 21 months in prison for sharing mosque killings video online
ST EXCLUSIVE: RESISTING THE PULL OF US-CHINA RIVALRY
In an op-ed for The Straits Times, Singapore's former ambassador to the US, Professor Chan Heng Chee, who is now chairman, Lee Kuan Yew Centre for Innovative Cities, Singapore University of Technology and Design, writes about how countries in the region are navigating the complicated geopolitics of the US-China rivalry, pushing back against pressure to pick a side.
"We are seeing the emergence, the coalescence of a number of like-minded countries which are coming together on shared concerns that they do not want to be forced to choose too starkly and which want to keep an enabling open trading environment going," she writes.
Read the full op-ed here: Resisting the polarising pull of US-China rivalry
AND FINALLY, ONE WAY TO GET PEOPLE INTERESTED IN POLITICS
I wonder if this will catch on. Pakistan regional minister Shaukat Yousafzai became a worldwide viral sensation after he broadcast his press conference live on Facebook with the cat filter turned on. That effectively meant that him and two others on screen were shown going about their serious politics while adorned with cat ears and whiskers. It's embarrassing but I doubt he has ever had a single video seen by this many people.
Other developments
At least 15 people have died after a passenger ferry sank off the Indonesian island of Java, police said on Tuesday (June 18). The boat was carrying around 50 people when it overturned on Monday in rough seas near Madura island, East Java, police spokesman Frans Barung Mangera said.
Vietnam has culled more than 2.5 million pigs to contain the spread of an African swine fever outbreak that is in danger of infecting every province of the country, an agriculture ministry official said on Tuesday (June 18).
Angry protests erupted in one of India's poorest states on Tuesday (June 18) over the deaths of more than 100 children from a mysterious brain fever potentially linked to lychees. So far this month, 103 children, mostly under 10 and malnourished, have died from Acute Encephalitis Syndrome (AES) in the Muzaffarpur area of the eastern state of Bihar.
That's a wrap for today. Thanks for reading.
- Jeremy
