The North fired an intercontinental ballistic missile believed capable of hitting the US mainland last Wednesday. A statement from Cathay said a flight crew had that day sighted “what is suspected to be the re-entry of the recent DPRK test missile”.

Cathay did not give the location of the flight at the time of the sighting, but said the crew of the CX893 flight between San Francisco and Hong Kong had notified Japanese air traffic control “according to procedures”. Operations had continued as normal, the statement added.

Pyongyang said the missile reached an altitude of 4,475 kilometres (2,800 miles) and splashed down 950 kilometres from its launch site.

It also claimed the Hwasong-15 missile fired Wednesday can be tipped with a “super-large heavy warhead” capable of striking the whole US mainland.

Cathay said there was no current plan to change air routes, describing the flight as being “far from the event location”.

“We remain alert and review the situation as it evolves,” the statement said.

In a message shared with staff, Cathay general manager Mark Hoey said the crew had described seeing the missile “blow up and fall apart”, the South China Morning Post reported.

Hoey said that another plane, CX096 which is a freight service between Hong Kong and Mexico, was only a few hundred miles away and could have been closer than the San Francisco flight, according to the report.

Cathay’s management also tried to reassure staff in a memo which described the incident as rare and cited experts who said the chances of a missile striking a plane that it was not targeting were very low, Apple Daily reported.

Local media said crews flying between Hong Kong and Seoul were being issued with satellite phones.

Analysts remain unconvinced that North Korea has mastered the advanced technology to allow the rocket to survive re-entry to the Earth’s atmosphere.

The months-long nuclear standoff between North Korea leader Kim Jong-Un and US president Donald Trump has fuelled concerns of another conflict, after the 1950-53 Korean War left much of the peninsula in ruin.

Air France in August said it was extending its no-fly zone around North Korea as a precaution after another missile launched from the country fell into the sea 100 kilometres (60 miles) from one its plane’s trajectories.

Its caution came after the July 2014 downing of Malaysia Airlines’ MH17 flight by a surface-to-air missile over Ukraine, killing 298 people.

Dutch-led investigators concluded that plane was downed by a Russian-made BUK missile transported from Russia into areas held by pro-Moscow rebels.//AFP

Excluding inflation, the increase is 9.5 per cent, reaching the highest rate this year, against the growth rate at 6.2 per cent in the first quarter, 8.4 per cent in the first half , 9.2 per cent in the first nine months and 9.4 per cent in the first 10 months of the year, the GSO said.

The increase in people’s purchasing power has been attributed to the high consumer demand, as the consumer price index grew slowly in 11 months, only by half of the growth rate against the same period last year, Vu Manh Ha, an expert at the GSO’s internal economics department, said.

During the first 11 months, the total retail sales of goods accounted for 75 per cent of the total to reach $120 billion, a year-on-year increase of 10.8 per cent. Retail sales of cars were up by 17.8 per cent, wooden products and building materials went up 12.5 per cent, all kinds of gasoline increased by 11.8 per cent, and food was up by 10.4 per cent.

Notably, the sales of construction materials rose sharply, especially materials used for repairing houses damaged by floods and storms in the central region of Vietnam. Car sales also increased due to many automotive companies offering discounts. Gasoline prices increased several times in the reviewed period.

Retail sales of accommodation, restaurant and catering services ranked second with an 11.2 per cent increase to touch nearly $20 billion.

Travel services also accounted for an increase of 16.2 per cent in spite having low value. The sales of other services accounted for 11.8 per cent of the total retail sales and services, posting a year-on-year rise of 9.6 per cent.

It had been used sparingly in the past to describe a dual citizen of Australia and New Zealand, but took on a new lease of life when Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce found out he also had Kiwi citizenship in August.

He was the highest profile scalp of a constitutional provision barring dual citizens from serving in federal parliament, with eight lawmakers forced to resign so far.

“In a time of covfefe, fake news, and tweetstorms, the Australian National Dictionary Centre has looked for a word of the year that is both lexically interesting and Australian,” the centre’s director Amanda Laugesen said in a statement.

Laugesen said “Kwaussie” was first used in 2002 to describe actor Russell Crowe.

“He was described as a Kwaussie — what you get when you cross a Kiwi who can’t decide whether they’re a Kiwi or an Aussie,” she said.

“Subsequent evidence suggests its use is predominantly Australian, found chiefly in social media, and also found with spelling variants including Kwozzie and Kwozzy.

“Thanks to the two Kwaussies identified as ineligible to sit in parliament — Barnaby Joyce and Greens Senator Scott Ludlam — the term is now becoming better known.”

Joyce automatically acquired New Zealand citizenship through his father, and was forced to contest a by-election at the weekend, which he won comfortably.

The citizenship crisis has engulfed a number of MPs who claim to have unknowingly held dual citizenship, and threatens more with politicians given a deadline of this week to come clean about their status.

The Australian National Dictionary Centre is a major centre for lexicographical research, conducting research into Australian English and editing dictionaries.//AFP

    On Friday the head of the Catholic church met a group of refugees from Myanmar’s  stateless Muslim minority in the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka.

He referred to them as “Rohingya” — a term unacceptable to many in Myanmar where they are reviled as alleged “Bengali” illegal immigrants rather than as a distinct ethnic group.

During his public addresses on the previous leg of his trip in mainly Buddhist Myanmar, Francis did not refer to the group by name or directly allude to the crisis in Rakhine state, from where over 620,000 Rohingya have fled since August.

His caution initially won applause from Myanmar’s tiny Catholic minority — who feared a nationalist blowback — as well as from Buddhist hardliners, who are on the defensive after a global outcry about the treatment of the group.

A deadly attack by Rohingya militants on police posts in late August sparked a ferocious crackdown in Rakhine by the Myanmar military, which the US and UN describe as ethnic cleansing.

As he arrived back at the Vatican, the pontiff said he had taken up the Rohingya cause in private in Myanmar, also describing how he wept after meeting the group of refugees.

“I wept: I tried to do it in a way that it couldn’t be seen,” he told reporters. “They wept too.”

The comments sparked a flurry of online anger in Myanmar, a country locked off from modern communications for five decades but which now has an active social media.

“He is like a lizard whose colour has changed because of weather,” said Facebook user Aung Soe Lin of the pope’s strikingly different stances on the crisis.

“He should be a salesman or broker for using different words even though he is a religious leader,” said another Facebook user called Soe Soe.

Myanmar’s Catholic church had advised Francis not to stray into the incendiary issue of the status of the Rohingya in Myanmar, in case he worsened tensions and endangered Christians.

In his public addresses he treaded softly on the topic, urging unity, compassion and respect for all ethnic groups — but not naming the Rohingya.

“The Pope is a holy person… but he said something here (in Myanmar) and he said different in other countries,” another Facebook user Ye Linn Maung posted.

“He should say the same things if he loves the truth.”

Others were more sanguine about Francis’ choice of language once he had left Myanmar soil.

Maung Thway Chun, chairman of an unofficial party of nationalists called the 135 Patriots Party, applauded the pope’s decision not to name them in Myanmar despite pressure from rights groups.

“It means he respects Myanmar people,” he said. “He even did not use the word many times in Bangladesh… I think he said it once, just to comfort human rights organisations.”//AFP

In an article posted to government mouthpiece Fresh News, the prime minister is quoted as saying CCHR would not need to shutter its operations – less than a week after saying publicly the often critical organisation “must close” and ordering the Interior Ministry to “investigate” it.

“After receiving the statement and the request to the government from CCHR, the Cambodian government has decided to keep this centre by allowing this institution to continue serving human rights activities in Cambodia, and after the investigation of the Interior Ministry has found no activities that involved violations of the law,” the premier was quoted as saying.

Prak Sam Oeun, the director of the Interior Ministry’s General Department of Administration, yesterday confirmed that CCHR could continue its work.

“When it performs properly with neutrality and is not biased to any party, no one will do anything to it. No one is going to do anything to it unless it wrongly supports this or that party,” he said.

CCHR was founded in 2002 by Kem Sokha, who would later go on to co-found the Cambodia National Rescue Party – the country’s largest opposition – only to be jailed in September on widely decried charges of “treason”. The party itself was dissolved at the government’s behest last month in a near-universally condemned Supreme Court decision for allegedly conspiring with foreign governments to foment “revolution”.

Government representatives at the trial accused CCHR, among other groups, of allegedly colluding with the CNRP in its purported plot.

CCHR, for its part, has long been one of the most outspoken local NGOs in Cambodia, and its leaders haven’t hesitated to criticise both the government and the opposition in the past. In a statement yesterday, the organisation welcomed the news that it could remain open.

“Although this has been a challenging time for CCHR’s staff, the organization remained fully confident that any impartial investigation would affirm CCHR’s genuine independence, and the absence of any wrongdoing on its part,” the statement reads. “CCHR looks forward to moving on from this investigation, and continuing the pursuit of its core mission: the urgent and vital work of protecting and promoting respect for human rights in Cambodia.”

Council of Ministers spokesman Phay Siphan also praised the decision in a Facebook post yesterday, saying it showed the government was committed to human rights. “This is the right decision of the prime minister to permit CCHR to continue operating,” he said.

In previous comments he had initially welcomed the potential closure of the organisation. In a message, CCHR Executive Director Chak Sopheap said her organisation had only heard about the investigation second hand.

“Despite hearing through the news channels that CCHR was under investigations, we did not receive any official communication from the Ministry of interior or other authorities, nor were we questioned about CCHR’s operations,” she said.

“In addition, I sincerely hope that the reversal of the Prime Minister’s position regarding the closure of CCHR is the first step for the full restoration of Cambodia’s once vibrant civil society, and that the authorities will work on providing a safe space for all organizations to operate freely.”

Naly Pilorge, deputy director of advocacy at the rights group Licadho, also called on the Interior Ministry to allow other organisations whose operations have been suspended to resume their work again.

“We are pleased that CCHR can continue operating to provide vital services to people in need and we hope that the Ministry of Interior will also clear other NGOs such as Equitable Cambodia to enable them to continue contributing services and assistance to society,” she said.

Equitable Cambodia was suspended for 30 working days at the end of September by the Ministry of Interior for allegedly failing to provide paperwork required by the controversial Law on Associations and NGOs (Lango), and for having allegedly sowed divisions between a ruling partyconnected sugar company and villagers involved in a land dispute.

The organisation said yesterday that it is still waiting for notification that it can resume operations from the Interior Ministry.

But the Interior Ministry’s Sam Oeun said Equitable Cambodia was still under suspension. “It has not expired yet,” he said.

The Working Group on Enabling and Protecting Civil Society, meanwhile, drew attention on Friday to recent contentious implementations of Lango, which has been criticised for unduly restricting NGOs’ freedom to operate.

Police have sealed off traffic on Pan Road near the Embassy pending investigation into the packages, according to 7 Day Daily online.

“The Future of E-commerce in FMCG” (fast-moving consumer goods) tracks the purchase of more than 500,000 shoppers in countries on three continents.

It said the top six contributors to “absolute value growth” were all big economies – China, the United States, South Korea, Britain, Japan and France.

The online grocery sector is expanding into new markets, with significant value growth in Thailand (104 per cent), Malaysia (88 per cent) and Vietnam (69 per cent).

In Vietnam, the e-commerce channel has evolved thanks to booming Internet use and smartphone ownership, together with massive investment by key retail players.

It now represents 0.5 per cent of the FMCG market in Ho Chi Minh City, Hanoi, Danang and Can Tho.

The percentage of e-commerce shoppers grew from 5.4 to 8.8 per cent in those four cities in the last year, the report said.

The man removed his shoes and socks on a bus going from the Himalayan state of Himachal Pradesh to New Delhi and put them near the aisle, police said.

Other passengers protested and asked the man to put away the offending socks or throw them out.

The man refused, sparking a heated confrontation that forced the bus driver to stop at a police station in Una district of Himachal Pradesh.

Una police chief Sanjeev Gandhi told AFP the bus stopped several times because of the smelly chaos before they came to the police station.

“He was arrested on charges of causing public nuisance and later released on bail,” Gandhi said.

Gandhi said the accused had threatened other passengers and caused a disturbance at the police station.

The man in turn filed a complaint against his fellow passengers and the bus crew for harassment and insisted his socks did not smell, the officer said.

He left the area in another bus a day later, police said.//AFP

Hungry customers lined up for Big Macs and Chicken McNuggets at the Vietnamese capital’s first location overlooking the tree-lined Hoan Kiem lake, which draws millions of tourists annually to see French-era colonial buildings and sample street-food favourites like pho noodle soup and banh mi sandwiches.

The restaurant is the first outside of the southern commercial hub Ho Chi Minh City, where 16 branches have opened since McDonald’s first came to Vietnam in 2014 to much fanfare, especially among the rapidly-growing middle class and American-obsessed youth.

The global fast food chain received a similarly warm welcome in Hanoi on Saturday, as hungry diners crammed into the two-storey eatery for a first taste of the Golden Arches.

For 84-year-old Tran Dinh Luyen, who fought against the US in the Vietnam War, the restaurant was a sign of warming ties with a former enemy.

“I am happy that McDonald’s has opened a restaurant in Hanoi. It’s a very famous American brand, so it shows how far US-Vietnam relations have come,” he told AFP after mowing down on a Big Mac with his daughter and granddaughter.

But not everyone agreed.

“It’s a rip-off … this fast food is for kids only, it’s not good at all,” 90-year-old Ta Xuan Huong said, espousing his love for traditional cuisine.

Some curious tourists stopped to see what all the fuss was about, perplexed that a brand ubiquitous in the West would draw so much attention.

“It’s kind of random to see McDonald’s opening … it’s an interesting cultural experience to see how important it is that the store is opening here,” American Dan Moore told AFP, after his wife remarked she might not have expected to find one of the most salient symbols of capitalism in the communist country.

The one-party state has seen dizzying economic growth in recent years as it has opened its doors to foreign investment — which has included an influx of western chains like Starbucks, KFC and Burger King.

Growth in the fast food sector has been buoyed by rapidly rising incomes — annual per capita income has more than doubled in the past decade to about $2,100 today — especially among under-30s, who make up half of Vietnam’s population of 93 million people.

The fast food industry in Vietnam has seen double-digit growth annually for the past five years, and the country has the highest 2017 growth in Asia-Pacific for fast food chains, according to market research firm Euromonitor International.

Though meals can cost as much as three times the local fare, customers are still showing strong appetite.

“Young people like to hang out in fast food restaurants as they are seen as a cool and nice place … and these customers also like the taste of the food,” Euromonitor analyst Samuel Huynh told AFP.

It was one of hundreds of attacks in the British capital every year that have prompted government intervention and left the city’s police force asking the public for help to tackle the crime wave.

Hussain recalled feeling “burning on my face” during the robbery in Hackney.

“If they want to take my bike, there are a lot of weapons… why (have) they got to choose the weapon of acid?” he told AFP as he returned to the spot where the attack happened.

The number of assaults is increasing rapidly.

The British capital saw 454 acid attacks reported last year, up from 261 in 2015 and 166 the year before.

Hussain suffers from chest problems after swallowing water which he believes contained traces of the acid, although his helmet protected much of his face and he has no visible scars.

A pizza delivery driver attacked in north-east London last month was not so lucky, left in a critical condition after being sprayed with acid while his helmet visor was up.

‘Scared’ Londoners

Jaf Shah, head of the London-based Acid Survivors Trust International, said victims were “incredibly strong, resilient and courageous individuals”.

“Because when you take into account the devastation of such an attack, it requires an enormous amount of strength to go through and recover,” he told AFP.

Shah blamed the increase in attacks on a lack of regulation to stop people buying acid, although he noted the recent cases have “concentrated the minds of government officials”.

Home Secretary Amber Rudd announced new proposals in October to force people carrying acid to prove they have a legitimate reason, taking the same approach used to tackle knife violence where possession of the weapon alone is criminalised.

Rudd also plans to require people buying high-concentrate sulphuric acid — such as drain cleaner — to apply for a Home Office licence.

MP Stephen Timms called for the changes in parliament in July, after his east London constituency of East Ham suffered a spate of attacks.

His intervention followed an attack against two cousins who were sitting in their car in Beckton, leaving both with life-changing injuries.

“What we cannot do is allow a situation where people feel scared to walk around the streets,” he told AFP in his local library.

“And that’s the position we were getting into after that attack on the two cousins, people just thought it wasn’t safe to walk up and down the road anymore.”

‘Melted their skin’

With many offenders in their teens or early 20s, East Ham’s borough of Newham in east London has preempted new legislation by asking shopkeepers to challenge young people buying acid and refuse sales if they are suspicious of customers’ intentions.

“The response in Newham has been really positive… Shopkeepers are actually very happy to be involved in addressing this problem,” said Timms.

While police have had some success in confiscating acid on the streets, Hackney’s borough commander Simon Laurence appealed to parents, teachers and social workers to ask young people what they’re carrying in plastic bottles.

“What’s in it? Why are they carrying it? Because the police can’t stop this alone, and we need the help of the community,” he told AFP outside Mangle nightclub in east London, where 22 people were injured in April with a substance the same strength as hydrochloric acid.

“It melted their skin, and they would have been in horrendous pain. Some of those victims will have life-changing injuries that they will be reminded of every day,” Laurence said, after a 25-year-old man was convicted over the attack.

London police carry acid response kits to treat victims and Laurence said the force wanted to be able to test substances on the streets.

“The bit we’ve got to be able to get better at is identifying what’s in the bottle when someone’s carrying it — and to stop people thinking they’re able to use it to cause such horrendous injuries.”

Fearful of returning to work, Hussain thinks more still needs to be done to make people realise the devastating impact of such a weapon.

“Why (do) they use the acid to destroy somebody’s face, and destroy somebody’s life?” he asked.