Russian President Vladimir Putin has invited Kim to participate in the September 11-13 Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok.

Kim has not confirmed his attendance, but his participation would mark another major step in his efforts to bring Pyongyang out of international isolation over its nuclear programme.

At a press briefing to announce Xi’s visit, Chinese officials would not comment on whether Xi planned to meet with other leaders during the summit.

“Should we have any proposals from other countries, China will positively consider these proposals,” assistant foreign minister Zhang Hanhui told reporters.

Xi and Kim met three times in China this year as the two countries seek to repair relations frayed by North Korea’s nuclear activities and Beijing’s backing of United Nations sanctions against its Cold War-era ally.

Xi is sending the head of China’s rubber-stamp legislature, Li Zhanshu, to Pyongyang this weekend to attend celebrations marking North Korea’s 70th anniversary, ending speculation that the Chinese president would use the occasion to make his first official trip to the neighbouring country.

In the latest chapter in the roller-coaster diplomacy over North Korea, US President Donald Trump signalled on Thursday that negotiations on denuclearisation remain alive after weeks of an apparent deadlock.

Xi will be in Vladivostok on Tuesday and Wednesday. It will be the first time that a Chinese leader participates in the annual economic forum hosted by Russia.

Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has also confirmed his attendance.

Relations between China and Japan have warmed over the last few years following a disagreement over Tokyo’s decision to take control of privately owned islets also claimed by Beijing in the East China Sea.

In recent months, the two sides have been negotiating an exchange of top level visits.

This means more Chinese can now understand and appreciate science and apply it to solve issues in life and at work, they added.

The figure is from the 10th national survey on scientific literacy, which concluded in 2018, said Bai Xi, director-general of the Department of Science Popularization at the Chinese Association of Science and Technology. The complete results of the latest survey have not been published.

The association has been conducting these surveys since 1992, and they typically have more than 50,000 respondents, said Xu Yanhao, vice-president of the science association. The survey tests respondents’ basic science knowledge, opinions on key scientific issues and their ability to use science to make decisions and solve problems.

In 2005, about 1.6 percent of China’s population was scientifically literate, according to the science association. In 2007, the proportion rose to 2.3 percent, and it reached 6.2 percent in 2015, during the ninth survey.

“The Chinese people in general are becoming more scientifically literate since the reform and opening-up,” Bai said. However, China still has a substantial gap compared with other advanced countries, he added.

In 2010, about 3.3 percent of China’s population was scientifically literate, which was on par with percentages for developed countries — such as Japan, Canada, and European countries — in the late 1980s, according to the eighth national survey.

In 2005, the State Council issued the world’s first government document on systemically improving scientific literacy during the next 15 years, Xu said. By 2020, China aims to have 10 percent of its population become scientifically literate.

“The 10 percent is a threshold,” said Xu. “The history of more than 30 technologically advanced countries shows that they generally become innovation powerhouses when at least 10 percent of their population is scientifically literate, he said.

“Ten percent of China’s population translates to more than 130 million people,” Xu said. “Imagine having this many people who are literate in science. Our nation’s innovation capacity and scientific development will surely soar in the future.”

Huai Jinpeng, executive vice-president of the science association, said China still has a huge disparity in scientific literacy between urban and rural populations.

In 2015, Shanghai, Beijing, and Tianjin were ranked as the top three areas in the proportion of residents who are scientifically literate, scoring 18.7, 17.6 and 12 percent, respectively, the ninth national survey said.

However, the survey also found more than 20 provinces were below the national average in scientific literacy. About 9 percent of China’s male population was scientifically literate in 2015, significantly higher than the 3.4 percent of China’s female population.

“China still has a large group of poor people who need science to improve their lives,” Huai said, adding the science association has been helping poor farmers reap the benefits of science, such as in planting new crops or using new irrigation methods, for around three decades.

“Improving scientific literacy, upholding the scientific spirit, and spreading the use of scientific methods are crucial in eliminating superstitions and false rumors,” he said. “This will be a long and challenging process, but we are confident in overcoming the issues.”

Heng Sour, the ministry’s spokesperson, told The Post yesterday that any employer who flouts the rules will face a penalty – which will be enforced as per Chapter 16 of the Labour Law.

In addition, employers need to submit a quota of how many foreign staff they plan to hire next year and foreigners employed outside the quota would be considered illegal.

“Any enterprise that hires outside the original quota or a foreigner who fails to apply for a work permit will have to pay the penalty,” he said, adding that both offenders have to pay the amount which will be calculated based on the number of years they have worked in the country.

For the first year, they will be fined a sum of 450,000 riel and the amount is doubled for two years and tripled in the third year.

According to the ministry’s announcement, the company or director of an institution that currently employs foreigners must extend their work permits for next year between January 1 and March 31, next year.

The application for work permits can be done online at the ministry’s website.

Sour also mentioned that foreigners are only allowed to work in Cambodian companies that are permitted by the government to hire foreign staff.

“We are making this announcement now so that companies or institutions that plan to employ foreigners will have sufficient time to submit their applications to the ministry. Fines will be imposed once the deadline ends.

“Those employing foreigners should be clear about the policy by now, so we do not expect any problems at all. If there is a problem, it means they have violated the law and they will face the penalty without any exemption,” he said.

Sour said many Asians applied for work permits in Cambodia but he was unable to provide the exact figures.

“Last year, most Asians requested for work permits but I am unable to give the breakdown now. However, all applications were processed smoothly without any delay,” he said.

The Immigration Department said about 160,000 foreigners are currently working in Cambodia, mostly Chinese nationals.

In February, the government issued a warning to all foreigners working in the Kingdom to obtain work permits. Employers will be fined $125 if they hire foreigners without proper permits.

“Today, we permanently suspended @realalexjones and @infowars from Twitter and Periscope,” the social network said.

“We took this action based on new reports of Tweets and videos posted yesterday that violate our abusive behavior policy, in addition to the accounts’ past violations.”

The move came a day after President Donald Trump’s administration warned of a possible legal crackdown on big technology companies over political bias, a bombshell announcement that came as social media executives including Twitter’s Chief Executive Officer Jack Dorsey were defending their policies before lawmakers.

The hearing was also attended by Jones, who said he came to highlight his deplatforming and “censorship” from other sites including Facebook and YouTube.

He later posted videos showing himself verbally confronting a CNN reporter as well as Republican Senator Marco Rubio in a hallway.

His Infowars website on Thursday suggested the incident involving the journalist, Oliver Darcy, may have been the cause of the ban.

“Watch the encounter that started it all,” the site posted above the clip.

9/11 and Sandy Hook

Twitter had previously resisted calls to ban Jones, though it prevented him from posting on his account for a week last month.

Jones is best known for disputing the veracity of the September 11 attacks and the Sandy Hook school massacre, which he has described as an elaborate hoax involving “crisis actors” in a conspiracy involving the administration of former president Barack Obama.

Parents of some of the children killed in the attack are pursuing a defamation case against him. He had almost 900,000 followers on Twitter before he was banned.

Justice Department probe

The Justice Department’s announcement Wednesday that it would probe Big Tech over competition or political bias appeared to escalate a war between the administration and Silicon Valley after a series of attacks by Trump claiming tech firms were biased against conservatives.

According to the statement, Attorney General Jeff Sessions will convene a meeting of state attorneys general later this month “to discuss a growing concern that these companies may be hurting competition and intentionally stifling the free exchange of ideas on their platforms.”

It came at the conclusion of a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing at which Dorsey and Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg testified in a largely collegial atmosphere where the executives and senators spoke of the need for further efforts to thwart foreign influence campaigns on social media

Home to the city of Veracruz, one of Mexico’s largest ports, the eastern state has a history of corrupt politics and grisly power struggles between rival cartels — a toxic mix that has caused an explosion of violence.

“The remains of at least 166 people have been found” in the latest mass grave site discovered in Veracruz, state prosecutor Jorge Winckler told journalists, making it one of the largest such sites so far.

The grave is located in central Veracruz, but authorities are not releasing the exact location for security reasons, he said. Forensic specialists are still working at the scene.

Winckler said investigators had also found 200 articles of clothing, 144 ID cards and other personal belongings at the site since exhumations began on August 8.

An informer told authorities that hundreds of people in all were buried at the site, the state prosecutor’s office said in a statement.

“Based on forensic analysis of the discoveries, it had been determined that these are clandestine burial sites which are at least two years old,” it said.

Authorities have used drones and ground-penetrating radar to help them locate the bodies.

They released photographs of investigators combing through the thick vegetation at the site, wearing white protective suits and gloves.

There are at least 32 separate grave sites, they said.

Hit squads, corruption

Activists accuse the state’s jailed ex-governor, Javier Duarte, of presiding over a rash of human rights abuses in Veracruz.

Two former state police chiefs and a string of ex-officials have been charged with running hit squads that abducted and presumably killed unwanted individuals during Duarte’s administration, from 2010 to 2016.

Duarte himself is in jail awaiting trial on corruption charges.

Investigators accuse him of stealing hundreds of millions of dollars in public funds to buy luxury properties, Miami vacation homes and thoroughbred horses, leaving the once-wealthy state on the verge of bankruptcy.

Some 3,600 people have gone missing in Veracruz since 2006, according to the new government.

Families of some of Veracruz’s legions of missing persons are still digging at another mass grave found in 2016, where 280 bodies have been discovered so far.

They recently announced they had received a tip-off from drug traffickers about another mass grave near that site containing as many as 500 bodies.

It was unclear whether the grave described by prosecutors was the same site.

Mexico has been hit by a wave of violence since deploying the army to fight the country’s powerful drug cartels in 2006.

Since then, more than 200,000 people have been murdered, including a record 28,702 last year.

Another 37,000 people are reported as missing.

The White House has been convulsed since Wednesday by a fevered hunt for the senior official who declared, in an unsigned article for The New York Times, that “unsung heroes” were quietly working within the administration to frustrate the president’s “worst inclinations.”

Trump responded with a furious volley of tweets that asked if the author had committed treason while First Lady Melania Trump condemned the decision to publish.

“To the writer of the op-ed — you are not protecting this country, you are sabotaging it with your cowardly actions,” she said.

On the internet and in Washington, meanwhile, a guessing game has raged over who the author might be, prompting nearly every cabinet-ranked member of the government to deny it was them.

Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats were among those who issued denials.

“The Vice President puts his name on his Op-eds. The @nytimes should be ashamed and so should the person who wrote the false, illogical, and gutless op-ed,” Pence’s spokesman Jarrod Agen wrote on Twitter.

“Our office is above such amateur acts.”

The manifesto followed the release of excerpts from a bombshell book by Watergate reporter Bob Woodward, who portrayed Trump’s White House as an out-of-control “crazytown.”

Firestorm

The Woodward book, “Fear: Trump in the White House,” reported that senior aides lifted documents from the Oval Office desk to keep the president from acting on his impulses, reinforcing the assertions in the Times article.

The firestorm caught up with Mattis and Pompeo in New Delhi, where Secretary of State denounced the Times’ decision to publish as “sad” and “disturbing.”

“I come from a place where if you’re not in a position to execute the commander’s intent, you have a singular option, that is to leave,” he said.

Both men denied involvement, while Coats, who as intelligence chief has at times been publicly at odds with Trump, said in a statement speculation that he or his deputy had written the op-ed were “patently false.”

When asked if she wrote it, UN envoy Nikki Haley responded with a curt “no” on her way to a Security Council meeting.

James Dao, who runs the Times op-ed page, told CNN he received the article several days ago through an intermediary, but had spoken directly with its author.

Eye-opening

In one eye-opening passage, the writer says cabinet members initially considered invoking the 25th Amendment of the US Constitution, which provides for the president’s removal if he is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.”

They decided against the move, fearing a constitutional crisis, but Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren took to the airwaves on Thursday to revive the idea.

“If senior administration officials think the president of the United States is not able to do his job, then they should invoke the 25th Amendment,” Warren told CNN.

Trump meanwhile has called for the article’s author to be unmasked.

“Are the investigative ‘journalists’ of the New York Times going to investigate themselves – who is the anonymous letter writer?,” he tweeted ahead of a rally in Montana.

The Times acknowledged the “rare step” of publishing an anonymous editorial but said the official’s job would be jeopardized if they were identified.

The piece described a “two-track” presidency in which Trump says one thing and his staff consciously does another, citing the president’s alleged preference “for autocrats and dictators.”

“The root of the problem is the president’s amorality,” the official said, denouncing Trump’s “impetuous, adversarial, petty and ineffective” leadership style.

Hunt said he also wanted to visit Myanmar to meet with military leaders and Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, the country’s de facto leader, who has faced criticism for failing to speak out.

“Ethnic cleansing in whatever shape or form, wherever it happens, should never go unpunished and the perpetrators of these appalling crimes must be brought to justice,” he told MPs.

A UN-backed fact-finding mission last month called for an international investigation and prosecution of Myanmar’s army chief and five other top military commanders for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes against the Rohingya.

The leaders strongly deny the claims, and Hunt acknowledged that bringing those responsible to justice would be a “long hard road”.

A referral to the International Criminal Court would need to come from the UN Security Council, but “at the moment it’s not clear that there would be a consensus on the Security Council to deliver that,” Hunt said.

However, he vowed: “We will leave no stone unturned to make sure the perpetrators are brought to justice.”

“I intend to be convening a high level meeting of ministers (on) the margins of the United Nations General Assembly later this month,” he said.

Hunt, who was appointed Britain’s top diplomat in July, said he would be able to make a “stronger case” for action if he visited the country himself.

“It is important that I visit Burma/Myanmar to meet the military, to meet Aung San Sui Kyi, to see for myself the situation on the ground,” he said.

He added that “a line has been crossed”.

“This is the kind of issue where countries that believe in civilised values have to take a stand and have to make sure justice is done,” he said.

Multiple, large-scale landslides struck the sparsely populated countryside, which was also hit by the edge of a powerful typhoon that surged through Japan earlier this week.

Aerial views showed dozens of houses destroyed at the bottom of a hill that was engulfed by a landslide, with a rescue helicopter winching a resident to safety.

Around three million homes lost power after the quake damaged a major thermal plant supplying the region.

The Tomari nuclear power plant in Hokkaido, which was not operational before the quake, was forced to turn to emergency back-up power to keep its cooling system working, NHK said.

Kazuo Kibayashi, 51, a town official at hard-hit Abira town, told AFP: “There was a sudden, extreme jolt. I felt it went sideways, not up-and-down, for about two to three minutes.”

“It stopped before shaking started again. I felt it come in two waves. I am 51, and I have never experienced anything like this. I thought my house was going to collapse. Everything inside my house was all jumbled up. I didn’t have time to even start cleaning,” he added.

Moments after the initial quake, an aftershock measuring 5.3 rocked the area and dozens more aftershocks followed throughout the night and into the morning.

Akira Fukui, from the main city of Sapporo, told AFP: “I woke up around 3am with a vertical jolt. I put the light on but it went out shortly afterwards. All the traffic lights are out and there’s no power at work.”

No tsunami warning was issued after the relatively shallow quake, which struck 62 kilometres (39 miles) southeast of the regional capital Sapporo.

Around 20,000 rescue workers, including police and members of the Self-Defence Forces were responding to the disaster, government spokesman Yoshihide Suga said. Another 20,000 SDF troops are expected to join the effort.

“We will do our best to save lives,” Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said after an emergency cabinet meeting.

NHK reported that eight people had lost their lives, six of them in the village of Atsuma, where the landslide engulfed the homes. Nearly 40 people were still missing, the broadcaster added.

Local media said the dead also included an 82-year-old man who fell down the stairs at his home during the quake and that around 130 people had sustained minor injuries.

“I urge people in areas shaken by strong quakes to stay calm, pay attention to evacuation information… and help each other,” Suga added.

Japan is still recovering from the worst typhoon to hit the country in 25 years, which struck the western part of the country on Tuesday, claiming at least 11 lives and causing major damage to the region’s main airport.

‘Ring of fire’

Officials warned of the danger of fresh quakes.

“Large quakes often occur, especially within two to three days (of a big one),” said Toshiyuki Matsumori, in charge of monitoring earthquakes and tsunamis at the meteorological agency.

The risk of housing collapses and landslides had increased, he said, urging residents “to pay full attention to seismic activity and rainfall and not to go into dangerous areas.”

The earthquake also caused travel disruption, with all flights cancelled from Sapporo’s main Chitose airport, where the quake brought down part of a ceiling and burst a water pipe. Local buses and trains and bullet train services were halted.

Industry Minister Hiroshige Seko said it would take “at least a week” for power to be restored to nearly three million homes after a fire in the area’s largest thermal plant was discovered.

And the national meteorological agency warned that more bad weather could be on the way for Hokkaido, urging people to be vigilant for landslides, high tides and heavy rain.

Japan sits on the Pacific “Ring of Fire” where many of the world’s earthquakes and volcanic eruptions are recorded.

In June, a deadly tremor rocked the Osaka region, killing five people and injuring over 350.

On March 11, 2011, a devastating 9.0-magnitude quake struck under the Pacific Ocean, and the resulting tsunami caused widespread damage and claimed thousands of lives.

The Czech CTK news agency said it was thought that the foreign victims could be Thai nationals.

The four-seater Robinson R44-Raven helicopter came down in an industrial zone in a suburb of the town of Plzen.

“Among the victims, there are three foreigners, two men and a women,” local police spokeswoman Dana Ladmanova said.

No-one from the Thai embassy in Prague was immediately contactable.

Chung, who returned from Pyongyang late Wednesday as President Moon Jae-in’s chief special envoy, said that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un reiterated his commitment to denuclearization, and that the joint liaison office will be opened before the summit.

“South and North agreed to hold the inter-Korean summit from Sept. 18 to 20 in Pyongyang, and to hold working-level talks at Panmunjom next week,” Chung said. The working-level talks will deal with security, communication and press related elements of the summit, Chung said.

“The summit will deal with the execution and direction of the Panmunjom Declaration, and discuss ways to realize denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, establishing permanent peace and shared prosperity (of the two Koreas).”

Chung also said that Kim expressed his commitment to “complete denuclearization” and to work closely with Seoul and Washington.