World Briefs
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Kyrgyz President consolidates rule
BISHKEK • Kyrgyz President Sooronbai Jeenbekov yesterday strengthened his grip on power by reshuffling top security officials and having his main opponent, former president Almazbek Atambayev, detained again just days after he left prison.
Kyrgyzstan's Parliament named Mr Sadyr Zhaparov prime minister yesterday, ending a power vacuum in the Central Asian nation which has been gripped by unrest since a contested election on Oct 4.
More than 1,200 people have been injured and one person has been killed in clashes since protests last Monday following an election in which establishment parties claimed a landslide victory, a result contested by opposition parties.
REUTERS
Aussie writer faces trial in China
SYDNEY • Detained Australian writer Yang Hengjun will face trial in Beijing on an espionage charge, with a judge expected to be appointed in the next fortnight, his friends said yesterday.
The 55-year-old blogger was detained by Chinese authorities in January last year at Guangzhou Airport after arriving from New York. He has been held in a Beijing detention facility with no access to his family, while his wife remains in China.
Australia yesterday said it has been informed that the Chinese authorities have decided to prosecute Dr Yang Hengjun.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison told a news conference: "We are obviously keen and have been stressing in all our diplomatic engagements around this issue that there should be transparency, there should be a fair and just process."
REUTERS
Floods in Cambodia force evacuations
PHNOM PENH • Elderly residents and small children clung to inflatable tyres as soldiers and police used rope lines to get them to safety from rising flood waters yesterday in Cambodia's western province of Battambang.
Hundreds of families in three provinces - Pursat, Battambang and Pailin - have been forced to evacuate amid extreme rainfall ahead of the arrival of a tropical depression across the Mekong region.
"A two-year-old and a 57-year-old man have drowned," a spokesman for the Cambodian national committee for disaster management said.
In central Vietnam, five people have died, with eight still missing, as floodwaters inundated more than 33,000 homes and forced more than 26,000 people to evacuate, the official disaster management authority said.
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE