“Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo should be allowed to return to their families and continue their work as journalists,” the UN’s Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator in Myanmar Knut Ostby.

“We continue to call for their release.”

Duterte lobbed the insult in response to steady criticism from the United States over his violent drug crackdown, which has been a target for international condemnation.

However, the Philippine president said his nation’s relationship with America has since improved under President Donald Trump, who he described as a “good friend” who “speaks my language”.

“It would be appropriate also to say at this time to Mr. Obama that you are now a civilian and I am sorry for uttering those words,” Duterte said Sunday in a speech before Filipinos in Israel.

Duterte landed in Israel on Sunday for a four-day stay as the Philippines seeks to develop new sources of military hardware and nail down protections for its overseas workers.

“If it is (in) your heart to forgive, you forgive. I have forgiven you, just like my girlfriends when I was still a bachelor… I have forgiven them also,” the Philippine leader said in the same speech.

After his election in mid-2016, Duterte quickly earned a reputation for using vulgar language against critics which his aides have tried to minimise or explain away.

He branded Pope Francis and the then US ambassador to Manila “sons of whores”. He also fired expletives at the United Nations and during a speech in the Philippines raised his middle finger in defiance to the European parliament.

Duterte often rails at critics of his campaign to rid the Philippines of narcotics, which police say has killed 4,410 alleged drug dealers or users.

Rights groups say the actual number of dead is triple that and could amount to crimes against humanity.

Duterte cursed Obama ahead of a regional summit in Laos two years ago prompting the US to cancel a meeting between the two leaders there.

Obama later described Duterte as “a colourful guy” as he urged him to conduct his anti-narcotics campaign “the right way”.

Duterte sparked new criticism ahead of his departure for Israel, blaming the high number of rapes in his hometown of Davao on the large number of beautiful women there.

“They say there are many rape cases in Davao,” Duterte said in a speech on Thursday. “For as long as there are many beautiful women, there will be many rape cases, too.”

Duterte has on several occasions made rape jokes in public since his presidential campaign. The latest comment was denounced by women’s rights defenders.

“Beauty doesn’t cause rape, rapists do,” said Philippine lawmaker Risa Hontiveros, a Duterte critic.

“Today is a sad day for Myanmar… and the press everywhere,” Stephen J. Adler, Reuters Editor-in-Chief, said in a statement, denouncing the charges as “false” and “designed to silence their reporting and intimidate the press”.

Myanmar nationals Wa Lone, 32, and Kyaw Soe Oo, 28, were accused of breaching Myanmar’s state secrets law during their reporting of a massacre of Rohingya were jailed for seven years Monday, in a case that has drawn outrage as an attack on media freedom.

The journalists who have been held in Yangon’s Insein prison since their arrest in December, were charged with violating the Official Secrets Act, a draconian British colonial-era law which carries a maximum sentence of 14 years.

The case has sparked an outcry among the international community as an attempt to muzzle reporting on last year’s crackdown by Myanmar’s security forces on the Muslim Rohingya minority in Rakhine state.

Army-led “clearance operations” drove 700,000 Rohingya into Bangladesh, carrying with them widespread accounts of atrocities — rape, murder and arson — by Myanmar security forces.

The reporters denied the charges, insisting they were set up while doing their jobs to expose the extrajudicial killing of 10 Rohingya Muslims in a Rakhine village in September last year.

They said they were invited to dinner by police who handed them documents before the pair were arrested as they left the restaurant for possessing classified material.

But Judge Ye Lwin was unmoved by their testimony.

“It is found that the culprits intended to harm the interests of the state.  And so they have been found guilty under the state secrets act,” he told the packed Yangon court.

“They are sentenced to seven years in prison each.”

The duo, both Myanmar nationals, were bundled into a prison van after the verdict.

The army has published its version of events at Inn Din village, conceding the Rohingya men were killed while in custody but saying it was a one-off act of abuse by a mix of security forces and ethnic Rakhine locals.

– ‘Crimes against humanity’ –

On Saturday, more than 100 journalists and activists marched through Yangon in support of the reporters, whose trial echoes the treatment of government critics during the long years of military rule in Myanmar.

“We want the immediate release of Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo,” journalist Hlin Thit Zin Wai told AFP.

“The right to information as well as access to information for the people is really difficult.”

Monday’s ruling comes a week after the release of an explosive United Nations-led study into abuses in Rakhine, accusing Myanmar’s army chief of heading up a campaign of “genocide” and “crimes against humanity” against the Rohingya.

It also strongly criticised de facto civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi for failing to use moral authority to stand up for the stateless minority.

The same day, Facebook pulled down the pages of Myanmar’s army chief Min Aung Hlaing and other military top brass, in what the company said was a bid to prevent them from further fanning “ethnic and religious tensions”.

As calls for Myanmar’s military leaders to face an international tribunal mount, they have remained defiant, insisting last year’s crackdown was a proportionate response to attacks by Rohingya militants.

If convicted, the two journalists can appeal and may also be eligible for a pardon at the discretion of Myanmar’s civilian president, a staunch Suu Kyi ally.

Suu Kyi’s reputation as a defender of human rights has been eviscerated by her refusal to speak out against the military for its handling of the Rohingya crisis or in support of the jailed reporters.

Xi spoke before the start of a two-day China-Africa summit that is expected to focus on his cherished Belt and Road initiative, a global trade infrastructure programme.

The massive scheme is aimed at improving Chinese access to foreign markets and resources, and boosting Beijing’s influence abroad.

It has already seen China loan billions of dollars to countries in Asia and Africa for roads, railways, ports and other major infrastructure projects.

But critics warn that the Chinese leader’s pet project is burying some countries under massive debt.

“China’s investment in Africa comes with no political strings attached,” Xi told a high-level dialogue with African leaders and business representatives hours before the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC).

“China does not interfere in Africa’s internal affairs and does not impose its own will on Africa,” he said.

“China’s cooperation with Africa is clearly targeted at the major bottlenecks to development. Resources for our cooperation are not to be spent on any vanity projects, but in places where they count the most.”

But Xi admitted that there was a need to look at the commercial viability of projects and make sure preparations are made to lower investments risks and make cooperation “more sustainable”.

Belt and Road, Xi said, “is not a scheme to form an exclusive club or bloc against others. Rather it is about greater openness, sharing and mutual benefit.”

A study by the Center for Global Development, a US think-tank, found “serious concerns” about the sustainability of sovereign debt in eight Asian, European and African countries receiving Belt and Road funds.

Rwandan President Paul Kagame, currently the chair of the African Union, dismissed such concerns, saying talk of “debt traps” were attempts to discourage African-Chinese interactions.

“Another perspective… is that those criticising China on debt give too little,” said Kagame in an interview with the official Xinhua news agency.

Enthusiasm for infrastructure

At the last three-yearly gathering in Johannesburg in 2015, Xi announced $60 billion of assistance and loans for Africa.

Nations across Africa are hoping that China’s enthusiasm for infrastructure investment will help promote industrialisation on the continent.

Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari will oversee the signing of a telecommunication infrastructure deal backed by a $328-million loan facility from China’s Exim bank during his visit, his office said.

Xi said Belt and Road complies with international norms, and China “welcomes the participation of other capable and willing countries for mutually beneficial third-party cooperation”.

China would be happy to help Africa upgrade its customs and commodities inspection facilities and provide supplies and equipment to improve trade connectivity with the continent, the Chinese leader added.

He also voiced hope that Chinese and African companies could find new ways to cooperate in the field of technology.

Xi’s guests include the presidents of countries ranging from Egypt to Senegal and South Africa, and controversial leaders such as Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir, who is wanted by the Hague-based International Criminal Court on war crime charges, which he denies.

Djibouti debt

China has provided aid to Africa since the Cold War, but Beijing’s presence in the region has grown exponentially with its emergence as a global trading power.

Chinese state-owned companies have aggressively pursued large investments in Africa, whose vast resources have helped fuel China’s transformation into an economic powerhouse.

While relations between China and African nations are broadly positive, concerns have intensified about the impact of some of China’s deals in the region.

Djibouti has become heavily dependent on Chinese financing after China opened its first overseas military base in the Horn of Africa country last year, a powerful signal of the continent’s strategic importance to Beijing.

Locals in other countries have complained about the practice of using Chinese labour for building projects and what are perceived as sweetheart deals for Chinese companies.

The concerns are likely to grow as countries in other parts of the world — especially Southeast Asia — begin to question whether Chinese aid comes at too high a price.

On a visit to Beijing in August, Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamed announced he was shelving a series of Chinese-backed infrastructure projects worth $22 billion in total.

In a burst of nationalist fervour, around one billion dollars is being spent on the two giant effigies, each more than twice as tall as the Statue of Liberty.

A 182-metre-high (600-foot-high) tribute to independence icon Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel in Gujarat state will be the first to dwarf the Spring Temple Buddha in China, currently the world’s biggest statue at 128 metres (420 feet) in height.

Pick-axes are also swinging for a 212-metre-high likeness of 17th-century king Chhatrapati Shivaji, resplendent on a horse and brandishing a sword, which should dominate the Mumbai shoreline from 2021.

An army of 2,500 workers — including several hundred Chinese labourers — is toiling around the clock to put 5,000 squares of bronze cladding on the figure of Patel so it can be ready for inauguration on October 31 by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The 29.9-billion-rupee ($430-million) “Statue of Unity” overlooking the isolated Sardar Sarovar Dam is a pet project of Modi.

He has predicted it will attract “hordes” of tourists, as the Statue of Liberty does in New York.

Visitors will be able to access a viewing gallery 153 metres up — about chest height on the huge standing figure.

But they will have to travel 250 kilometres (150 miles) from the state’s main city of Allahabad to get there.

‘Iron Man’ emerges

There is also a political motive to the mega project, with India heading into a campaign for a national election early next year.

Patel was deputy to India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru after independence in 1947 and Modi’s nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party says his name has been unfairly overshadowed by the dominant Nehru dynasty.

Patel became known as the “Iron Man of India” by persuading — through talks and a hint of force — some 550 princely states to become part of India after independence from Britain in 1947. He died three years later.

Many Hindu nationalists feel it was a slight when Patel was asked to step aside to let the secular Nehru become the country’s first leader.

“Every Indian regrets Sardar Patel did not become the first prime minister,” Modi said while campaigning in 2013.

“Modi has used Patel’s legacy a lot in his election campaigns,” said Ghanshyam Shah, a former professor of class politics at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi.

“He is very likely to use the Statue of Unity during the upcoming campaign but I am worried about how it will influence voters,” Shah added.

The opposition Congress party says that a plan to change the Nehru Memorial museum in New Delhi into a centre devoted to all of India’s prime ministers is another bid to taint Nehru’s name.

In 2016, Modi laid the foundation stone in Maharashtra state for the statue of Shivaji, a hero of the 80 million strong Marathi community based in the state.

Hindu nationalists have also adopted Shivaji, who made his name battling the Muslim Mughal empire. Critics say the 36-billion-rupee ($515-million) statue is a way of winning Marathi votes in next year’s election.

Fuelling the fervour, the government announced last week that the word “Maharaj”, or king, had been added to the title of Mumbai’s Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport.

Statue politics

“The BJP has been appropriating icons for some time,” said Sudha Pai of the Indian Council of Social Science Research.

“Patel has been used to wipe out the Nehru legacy. The BJP wants to change the way history is perceived and show that the right wing was as important in India’s freedom struggle.”

Preliminary work has started on the controversial project — with a museum, park and helipad — on reclaimed land two kilometres (1.5 miles) out to sea.

Environmentalists and thousands of fishing workers oppose the statue because of the threat to fishing stocks.

The price of the monument is certain to rise, analysts say and the state government has already changed the design to bring down costs.

How it will eventually look and when it will be finished remains in doubt.

India’s statue politics often fall victim to “hard economic reality”, according to Badra Narayan, a professor at the Pant Social Science Institute in Allahabad.

An overrun is inevitable, according to I.C. Rao, head of a Mumbai citizens’ group, who has questioned the cost and safety of the Shivaji design.

He said finishing the statue on time, would be “an impossibility even for the Trojans”.

It comes a year after the Australian Broadcasting Corporation began running a Chinese-language service.

ABC said access to its website and apps was blocked on August 22 and it has since been trying to find out why.

After repeated requests for clarification, an official from China’s Office of the Central Cyberspace Affairs Commission dictated a statement to the broadcaster.

“We welcome internet enterprises from all over the world to provide good information to the netizens of China,” said the official, who declined to give his name, according to ABC.

“However, state cyber sovereignty rights shall be maintained towards some overseas websites violating China’s laws and regulations.”

The official said these included websites “spreading rumours, pornographic information, gambling, violent terrorism and some other illegal harmful information which will endanger state security and damage national pride”.

ABC said it had not been told what laws it had violated or which content sparked the ban.

However, ties between Canberra and Beijing have been strained recently over allegations that China is interfering in Australia’s domestic politics and using donations to gain access.

The claims infuriated China, which has dismissed local media stories — including by ABC — about infiltration as hysteria and paranoia.

The ABC also recently reported on Beijing’s push into the Pacific through “soft diplomacy”, which Australia and New Zealand fear could potentially upset the strategic balance in the region.

The case has sparked widespread condemnation and focused attention on what rights groups say is a deteriorating climate for the gay community in the Muslim-majority country.

Campaigners said it was the first time that women in Malaysia have been caned for violating a sharia regulation which forbids same-sex relations.

The country operates a dual-track legal system and Islamic courts can handle religious and family matters for Muslim citizens, as well as cases such as adultery.

The women, aged 22 and 32, were arrested in April by Islamic enforcement officers after they were found in a car in a public square in northern Terengganu state, one of the country’s most conservative areas.

The pair, whose identities have not been revealed, pleaded guilty last month to breaking Islamic laws and were sentenced to six strokes of the cane each and a fine of 3,300 ringgit ($800).

They were caned at the Sharia High Court in Kuala Terengganu, state capital of Terengganu, a court official confirmed to AFP.

The women’s conviction sparked a storm of criticism. Before the caning was carried out, Gwen Lee, Amnesty International’s Malaysia head, slammed the punishment as “cruel and unjust”.

Malaysia “must end the use of caning and repeal the laws that impose these torturous punishments completely,” she said.

Thilaga Sulathireh, from transgender rights group Justice for Sisters, said the caning would “increase the impunity of perpetrators to carry out acts of violence” aimed at gay people.

Concerns have been mounting in recent weeks in Malaysia, a multi-ethnic country where some 60 percent of the population is Muslim, about a deteriorating climate for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community.

The Islamic affairs minister has spoken out against homosexuals and ordered pictures of LGBT activists to be removed from a public exhibition, while a transgender woman was brutally attacked in the southern state of Negeri Sembilan.

Malaysian Muslims have traditionally practised a tolerant brand of Islam but concerns have been growing in recent years that attitudes are becoming more conservative.

Wa Lone, 32, and Kyaw Soe Oo, 28, who have been held in Yangon’s Insein prison since their arrest in December, were charged with violating the Official Secrets Act, a draconian British colonial-era law which carries a maximum sentence of 14 years.

The case has sparked an outcry among the international community as an attempt to muzzle reporting on last year’s crackdown by Myanmar’s security forces on the Muslim Rohingya minority in Rakhine state.

Army-led “clearance operations” drove 700,000 Rohingya into Bangladesh, carrying with them widespread accounts of atrocities — rape, murder and arson — by Myanmar security forces.

The reporters denied the charges, insisting they were set up while exposing the extrajudicial killing of 10 Rohingya Muslims in the Rakhine village of Inn Din in September last year.

They said they were arrested after being invited to dinner by police in Yangon who handed them documents. As they left the restaurant, the pair were detained for possessing classified material.

Judge Ye Lwin was unmoved by their testimony.

“It is found that the culprits intended to harm the interests of the state.  And so they have been found guilty under the state secrets act,” he told the packed Yangon court.

“They are sentenced to seven years in prison each.”

As they were led to the waiting prison van the handcuffed duo, both Myanmar nationals, gave brief but emotional statements on the court steps.

“The government can detain us in the prison but… don’t close the ears and eyes of the people,” Kyaw Soe Oo said.

Wa Lone who gave a defiant “thumbs up” to the masssed ranks of reporters, said “we will face it (the verdict) with stability and courage.”

– ‘Crimes against humanity’ –

Defence lawyer Khin Maung Zaw said that an appeal would be lodged “as soon as possible” against the verdict which Reuters denounced as based on “false charges”.

“Today is a sad day for Myanmar… and the press everywhere,” Stephen J. Adler, Reuters Editor-in-Chief, said in a statement, adding that the outcome was “designed to silence their reporting and intimidate the press”.

The army has published its version of events at Inn Din village, conceding the Rohingya men were killed while in custody but saying it was a one-off act of abuse by a mix of security forces and ethnic Rakhine locals.

Monday’s ruling comes a week after the release of an explosive United Nations-led study into abuses in Rakhine, accusing Myanmar’s army chief of heading up a campaign of “genocide” and “crimes against humanity” against the Rohingya.

It also strongly criticised de facto civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi for failing to use moral authority to stand up for the stateless minority.

The same day, Facebook pulled down the pages of Myanmar’s army chief Min Aung Hlaing and other military top brass, in what the company said was a bid to prevent them from further fanning “ethnic and religious tensions”.

As calls for Myanmar’s military leaders to face an international tribunal mount, they have remained defiant, insisting last year’s crackdown was a proportionate response to attacks by Rohingya militants.

Suu Kyi’s reputation as a defender of human rights has been eviscerated by her refusal to speak out against the military for its handling of the Rohingya crisis or in support of the jailed reporters.

Records from Hennepin County Jail showed Liu, founder and CEO of Chinese online retail giant JD.com, was arrested over the misconduct allegations late Friday night and released Saturday afternoon.

The Minneapolis Police Department said the investigation remained active and would not confirm details of the arrest or the allegations against the 45-year-old Liu.

“The individual was arrested Friday evening and released Saturday afternoon. He was released pending formal complaint,” Public Information Officer John Elder told AFP.

In the state of Minnesota, “criminal sexual conduct” encompasses a broad spectrum of nonconsensual sexual activity.

In a statement posted on Chinese social media network Weibo, JD.com confirmed that Liu had been arrested over what it described as a false allegation during a business trip.

The statement, contradicting US police, added authorities found no evidence of misconduct and released Liu to continue his trip.

Founded in 1998, the Fortune Global 500 company is China’s second-largest e-commerce firm and an aggressive competitor of Alibaba.

The company says it offers a “one stop” shopping experience to over 300 million active customers in China, with same- and next day-delivery as standard.

In June, Google announced it would invest more than half a billion dollars into JD.com as part of a move to expand retail services around the world.

The firms will marry JD’s supply chain and logistics experience with Google technology to create “next generation” personalized retail in regions including Southeast Asia, the US and Europe, both companies said in a statement.