Bogor, Indonesia – Former US president Barack Obama arrived Friday in his former childhood home Jakarta, where he met Indonesia’s president at the end of a ten-day family holiday.

Indonesia’s President Joko Widodo met with Obama at the presidential palace on the outskirts of Jakarta, with Obama delighting local media by greeting Widodo with “apa kabar” — how are you in Indonesian.

The former first family arrived a week ago on the resort island of Bali and then visited the historic Yogyakarta city in central Java before coming to the capital.

President Widodo took Obama to a cafe in the botanical garden next to the palace, where he sampled traditional snacks and ate a bowl of meatball soup.

Obama spent four years in Indonesia in the late 1960s in the then-sleepy capital Jakarta after his mother married an Indonesian man, following the end of her marriage to his Kenyan father.

Many Indonesians feel a strong bond with Obama because of his early exposure to Indonesian culture, and a two-metre (six-foot) bronze statue has been placed in his former school.

The statue of “Little Barry” — as Obama was known to his Indonesian school friends — depicts a young Obama dressed in shorts and a T-shirt with a butterfly perched on his hand.

Obama is travelling with his wife and their two teenage daughters.

Prior to Jakarta, they toured a Hindu temple wearing traditional sarongs, walked through terraced rice paddy fields and white water rafted in Bali.

They also visited ancient Buddhist and Hindu temples on Yogyakarta.

Obama is expected to give a speech about pluralism and tolerance at an Indonesian diaspora convention on Saturday before wrapping up his tropical holiday in the world’s most populous Muslim-majority country.//AFP

At the end of a 10-day family holiday, Obama spoke to a packed crowd in the capital Jakarta, where he praised the spirit of tolerance in Indonesia, saying you could see mosques, temple and churches alongside each other.

“That spirit is one of the defining things about Indonesia, the most important characteristics to set as an example for other Muslim countries around the world,” Obama said.

The 44th president of the United State then said: “Bhinneka Tunggal Ika,” — Indonesia’s motto, which means unity in diversity, prompting huge cheers from the crowd of thousands of leaders, business people and students at the Fourth Congress of Indonesian Diaspora.

Obama lived in Indonesia when he was a six-year-old boy with his mother, an anthropologist, and his Indonesian stepfather and half-sister.

His mother later divorced and Obama moved back to Hawaii at the age of 10 to live with his grandparents.

The Muslim-majority country has recently seen a rise in Islamic radicalism.

Its track record as a tolerant nation is being tested after former Jakarta governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama — an ethnic Chinese Christian — lost Jakarta’s mayoral election in April against a prominent Muslim candidate.

Purnama was later sentenced to two years prison in May for blasphemy over comments he made about the Koran which divided the nation and stirred up issues of religion and ethnicity in the archipelago, which was long hailed by other countries for its ability to tolerate different religious.

Prior to Jakarta, Obama and his family visited the resort island of Bali and the ancient city of Yogyakarta which is known for its temples.

The Obamas will leave Indonesia for South Korea on Sunday.

 The full-scale introduction of automated gates that do not require interviews by immigration officers will shorten waiting times at immigration control. The ministry is also aiming to strengthen counterterrorism measures ahead of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics by reassigning immigration officers who mainly carry out immigration procedures for arriving and departing Japanese nationals to procedures for foreign nationals.

The facial recognition system will read photo data stored on an IC chip embedded in a person’s passport, comparing it with a photo taken at immigration facilities to verify the person’s identity. A passenger needs to hold their passport over a reader, which then takes their picture. If the person in the two photos is recognized as the same person, the passenger can pass through the gate. There is no age limit for passengers, and prior procedures are not necessary. Immigration examinations using the system are expected to be completed in about 15 seconds.

Three automated gates of this kind will be introduced at Haneda Airport in October, ahead of other airports, and will be used for immigration procedures for Japanese passengers arriving from abroad. In the next fiscal year, the automated gates will be gradually introduced at Narita, Haneda, Kansai and Chubu airports, which deal with about 90 percent of incoming and outgoing Japanese passengers. The ministry hopes to use the automated gates for immigration procedures for Japanese people arriving in and leaving from Japan.

According to the ministry, 2,680 immigration officers had been slated to conduct immigration procedures and other duties in fiscal 2016, with 80,440,737 people arriving in or departing from Japan in 2016. Of them, about 30.93 million were Japanese nationals who used Narita, Kansai, Haneda and Chubu airports. The four airports also dealt with about 34.67 million incoming and outgoing foreign passengers, with the number expected to further grow.

If automated gates are used for more immigration procedures for Japanese passengers, the ministry hopes to increase the number of officers handling immigration procedures for foreign nationals and strengthen border control measures to prevent terrorists from entering Japan.

The government has aimed to shorten waiting times at immigration control to within 20 minutes or less. However, the average waiting time was up to 35 minutes at Kansai and 28 minutes at Narita and Chubu in 2016, falling short of that goal.

In 2007, automated gates using fingerprint authentication were introduced in Japan. However, passengers need to register their fingerprints in a prior application, so the usage rate among Japanese travelers was just 8 percent in 2016. The facial recognition system does not require prior procedures, which likely will help widen the use of automated gates equipped with a facial recognition system.

In order to introduce the facial recognition system, the ministry will revise ministerial ordinances that are relevant to the Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Law.

Xi spoke in a televised address after swearing in new Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam as pro and anti-Beijing protesters clashed close to the ceremony.

Lam was selected by a pro-China committee, as were her predecessors, and is already being cast by critics as a China stooge in a city where many are angry at Beijing’s tightening grip on the freedoms of nearly eight million people.

Xi said that any threats to the authority of China’s communist party government “cross the red line and are absolutely impermissible”.

The warning comes after the emergence of young activists calling for self-determination or even full independence for Hong Kong, which has infuriated Beijing.

He added that Hong Kong had “more extensive democratic rights and freedoms than at any other time in its history”.

Lam took her oath of office under China’s national flag at the city’s harbourfront convention centre, before shaking hands with Xi.

Her inauguration comes a day after Beijing’s foreign ministry declared that the document signed by Britain and China which initiated the handover “is no longer relevant”.

The Sino-British Joint Declaration gave Hong Kong rights unseen on the mainland through a semi-autonomous “one country, two systems” agreement, lasting 50 years.

There are growing fears that those freedoms are now under threat from an assertive Beijing, with Chinese authorities accused of interfering in a range of areas in Hong Kong, from politics to media and education.

Pro-China protesters targeted a small march by activists in memory of the victims of Beijing’s 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown Saturday morning as officials gathered for the swearing in.

As the pro-democracy campaigners prepared to carry a makeshift coffin towards the convention centre, as they do each year, a man ran across the street and kicked it.

Flag-waving pro-China protesters then blocked the march as police struggled to separate the two sides.

Democracy campaigners were taken away in police vans and released soon after.

Lam’s swearing in by Xi is deeply symbolic for frustrated activists who have been pushing for fully free leadership elections for the city, with mass pro-democracy “Umbrella Movement” rallies bringing parts of the city to a standstill in 2014.

Those protests were sparked by a Beijing-backed political reform package which said Hong Kong could have a public vote for leader, but that candidates must be vetted first.

The proposal was voted down in parliament by pro-democracy lawmakers and the reform process has now stalled.

Lam has made no commitment to revisit it soon.

The failure of the democracy movement to win concessions has led some young campaigners to call for self-determination or even independence for the mainland, which has infuriated Beijing.

“Choose Love,” read one banner in the about 100-strong crowd outside Chancellor Angela Merkel’s office and near the Reichstag building housing the lower house.

Champagne corks popped and whoops, cheers and whistle blasts went through the crowd braving summer rain as news broke that lawmakers inside the chamber had passed the historic bill.

Among those celebrating from the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community was Soeren Landmann of the “Marriage for All” initiative.

“I got married one year ago in Scotland because we were not allowed to do it in Germany,” he told AFP.

“I am inconceivably happy that a couple that would like to get married won’t have to go abroad for it anymore, and that they can now get married here in a very normal way.”

Inside the chamber, where supporters threw confetti, the 393-226 vote spelt a victory especially for Greens party politician Volker Beck, 56, a veteran gay rights campaigner who was ending a 23-year career as a lawmaker Friday.

“Today a bastion has fallen,” he told German news agency DPA on the move to allow full marriage rights rather than the civil unions introduced in 2001.

He greeted the speedy vote, which was forced by leftist parties three months before September 24 elections, saying it “spares us an election campaign fought on the backs of lesbians and gays”.

– ‘Vote for love’ –

===================

The law was pushed by centre-left Social Democrats, Greens and the far-left Linke party but also supported by 75 conservative lawmakers after Merkel allowed them to vote their conscience.

Merkel herself said she voted against the measure, based on the belief that a marriage is between a man and a woman.

The view was shared by Berlin Archbishop Heiner Koch, who voiced regret about the “watering down” of a sacred institution.

Marriage as enshrined in the German constitution aimed to protect those “who as mother and father give life to their children”, he said.

Most Germans however favour the change, which follows similar laws in many western democracies, with about three-quarters of Germans support, according to recent surveys.

The Lesbian and Gay Association, which has pushed for the reform since 1990, greeted the outcome, declaring that “Germany has voted for love”.

“This is a historic day!” it said in a statement. “Not only for lesbians and gays, but also for a more just and democratic society.”

Marriage would from now be based “not on gender but on love, committment and the promise to be there for each other in good times and in bad”.

The next step would be to achieve full societal acceptance that guarantees everyone the right to “be different, at any time, in any place, without fear and the threat of hostility”.

Klaus Wolter, 48, who lives in Singapore, went missing last Wednesday after telling the hotel he was staying at that he wanted to trek up Mount Sibayak, an active volcano in North Sumatra province.

Scores of rescuers began scouring the volcano — which last erupted over a hundred years ago — the day after he set off, in a frantic search which lasted eight days, and at one point included a helicopter.

Wolter’s body was found on Thursday near a waterfall several kilometres away from where he was last seen.

The rescue team took hours to retrieve the body due to the rough terrain, the head of the local search and rescue mission office, Budiawan, said.

“The wife of the victim has confirmed that it is her husband,” Budiawan, who goes by one name, told AFP.

There have previously been fatalities among tourists climbing volcanoes in Indonesia.

In 2010, an Italian tourist was killed after falling into a ravine when climbing Mount Rinjani, the second-highest volcano in Indonesia.

First lady Peng Liyuan has made headlines for her dress sense and charm as she meets members of the public, while Xi is sticking to more formal visits, including a massive military parade and a meeting with police trainees.

The couple arrived in the bustling financial hub Thursday to mark 20 years since the city was handed back to China by Britain, at a time when tensions are high over Beijing’s encroaching influence on the semi-autonomous city.

Peng’s curated image shows Beijing’s desire to boost its soft power on the global stage, with state media lauding her “public diplomacy” as spreading “kindness and goodwill”.

The wives of Chinese presidents have traditionally been far less prominent publicly than their counterparts overseas, particularly US first ladies.

Xi is not scheduled to meet regular citizens during the three-day trip to Hong Kong, a task that has been taken on by his celebrated soprano singer spouse who visited a kindergarten and elderly home in the first two days.

She has received a warm welcome on social media, even on traditionally sceptical forums.

“Although I’m not a fan of Xi, his wife is definitely more than presentable,” one user commented on the website of the usually anti-China Apple Daily website.

Others called her “dignified and noble” and “a real beauty.”

Peng emerged from the plane Thursday holding hands with Xi, wearing a high-collar white striped jacket paired with a beige skirt and an upswept hairstyle.

Later that day she visited kindergarten students and handed out gifts as they played.

On Friday, as Xi oversaw a massive military parade in rural Hong Kong, Peng visited an elderly home wearing a dark-coloured belted dress adorned with a flower brooch as residents praised her for being “smart” and “pretty”.

But some observers criticised the visits as exploiting more vulnerable members of society to stage a show.

“Little children don’t understand what’s happening, only that a stranger auntie is giving them presents,” one social media user commented on Facebook.

“Brainwashing starts from kindergarten. How scary,” another said.

Peng was a well known folk singer and rose to superstardom performing at gala shows belting out patriotic lyrics.

She has rarely performed since Xi rose to the presidency, instead accompanying him on trips abroad and speaking at events on health and philanthropy within China.

She performed in Hong Kong at the celebration of the 10th anniversary of the 1997 handover, wearing a lavish pink and red gown.//AFP

Cai Guo-Qiang is best known for designing the 2008 Olympic Games “giant footprints” – the amazing fireworks display that lit up the Beijing sky during the opening ceremony. Two billion people around the world witnessed the spectacle.

But it isn’t his only claim to fame.

In the semi-biographical documentary film “Sky Ladder: The Art of Cai Guo-qiang”, the 59-year-old New York-based artist reveals his dream project.

The “Sky Ladder” is one of Cai’s Projects for Extraterrestrials. Courtesy of Cai Studio/Netflix

The film shows Cai – in a fishing village in his hometown of Quanzhou in Fujian province – igniting a 500-metre ladder of rope and gunpowder. The structure shimmers as it’s carried into the sky by a huge hot-air balloon.

This is the “Sky Ladder” of the title, one of his Projects for Extraterrestrials begun in 1990. Using fireworks, Cai is exploring the links between humankind and an unseen world.

The “Sky Ladder” stayed grounded three times before it finally rose above that fishing hamlet. Bad weather and security concerns prevented planned launches in Beijing, Bath in England and Los Angeles in the United States.

“People tried to persuade me to quit, but I persisted because this was a tribute to my 100-year-old grandmother,” Cai said at the documentary’s screening during the recent Shanghai International Film Festival.

His grandmother was there to see his dream project take flight. She’d been the first in his family to believe in his abilities. More than 1,000 other people watched the movie with her in its first screening on the Chinese mainland.

The film has been streamed on Netflix to around 190 countries since last October.

One of Cai Guo-Qiang’s massive fireworks creations rises from a river barge to promote the opening

of an exhibition of his art in Shanghai.  Courtesy of Cai Studio/Netflix

The documentary, directed by Oscar winner Kevin Macdonald (“One Day in September”), traces Cai’s journey from his early days in Quanzhou.

In one scene, he has an emotional conversation with his ailing father. There’s also a clip from an old black-and-white movie in which he played the villain.

Cai described the shoot as “amazing, yet confusing”.

“For quite a long time, Kevin couldn’t figure out how to develop the story,” he explained. “He and his crew just followed me around for two years, always asking me questions.”

Cai chose Macdonald from a list of directors the producers provided. “Kevin had never been to China and knew very little about me and my art, so I immediately said I wanted him.

“I didn’t want someone who’d talk too much about my prizes or achievements. I wanted someone to tell my story through the perspective of an ordinary onlooker.”

The documentary idea emerged during a chat with Xiong Xiaoge, a renowned investor and founding partner of IDG Capital, during a flight to Russia in 2014.

Xiong, who was impressed by Cai’s art, brought on board fellow investors Wendi Deng, a Chinese-American businesswoman, and Liu Dejian, chairman of Fujian-based tech firm Netdragon Websoft.

Cai said he’s happy to see the documentary so well received. The Internet Movie Database (IMDb) and ranking site Rotten Tomatoes both give it high scores.

For the future, Cai plans to continue painting and producing his “gunpowder art”. “I feel I’ve been lucky,” he said. “I can do what I want to do.”

Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Lu Kang told a press briefing that Beijing has lodged a formal protest with Washington and urged the US government to “uphold its solemn commitment to the One-China principle”.

“Taiwan is an indispensable part of China’s territory and we firmly oppose this arms sale to Taiwan,” Lu said.

His comments come after China’s embassy in the United States slammed the sale, saying it was a “wrong move” that would hurt relations between the two countries.

“The wrong move of the US side runs counter to the consensus reached by the two presidents in Mar-a-Lago and the positive development momentum of the China-US relationship,” the embassy said.

“It will harm the mutual trust and cooperation between China and the US.”

Chinese President Xi Jinping met with his US counterpart Donald Trump at the billionaire’s luxury resort in Florida in April.

Relations between the two countries had appeared to improve since the talks, with Trump hailing an “outstanding” relationship with Xi.

But there are signs the honeymoon might be over with Trump criticising China for not doing enough to get North Korea to abandon its nuclear ambitions and the US slapping sanctions on a Chinese bank accused of laundering North Korean cash.