In Asia, Cambodia enjoys the most number of non – working days with 28 public holidays in a year, according to date collected by the World Atlas. The country uses traditional Khmer calendar for the Buddhist holidays and syncs it with solar calendar for other business holidays.

The second spot for most number of holidays is shared by Sri Lanka. The country has around 25 public holidays in a year.

India has third highest number of holidays in Asia with 21 public holidays every year. The holiday calendar is quite diverse based on multi religious and multi-cultural population across the country.

Philippines is at the fourth spot with 18 public holidays a year. Some of the most significant holidays of the year are New Year ’s Eve, Independence Day and Holy week. It is followed by China with 17 holidays a year the significant one being Dragon boat festival, Lantern festival and National day.

Thailand and Pakistan each have 16 holidays per year followed by Japan and Malaysia with 15 holidays each. Indonesia has 14 public holidays in a year.

South Korea has 13 Public holidays in a year. Non-working days in South Korea are known as red days only because those days are marked in red on the calendar. Choseok is the Korean thanksgiving and one of the most significant holidays of the year.

Nepal has 13 holidays per year. Singapore has the least number of holidays with 11 off days per year.

The video was found in a USB key belonging to Cherif Chekatt, 29, who was shot and killed by police after a two-day manhunt in the city following the December 11 attack.

The Islamic State group claimed Chekatt was one of their “fighters”, but this was dismissed by French Interior Minister Christophe Castaner.

Chekatt’s father, Abdelkrim, had said his son believed the Islamic State “fought for a good cause”.

“I always told him they were criminals,” his father added.

Four of the five people killed in the attack were foreigners or born abroad. They included a Thai tourist, a Franco-Afghan garage owner, an Italian journalist and a former Pole who had lived in Strasbourg for the past 20 years.

The dead also included a 61-year-old Frenchman who had just retired and was shot in the head as he stepped out of a restaurant.

Operations for several key agencies ceased at 12:01 am Saturday (0501 GMT), despite last-ditch talks that continued on Capitol Hill between White House officials and congressional leaders in both parties.

Most critical security functions remain operational but 800,000 federal workers are impacted, with many furloughed just days before Christmas while others deemed essential are working unpaid.

And as many other Americans and tourists began vacations head of end-of-the year holidays some national parks have shuttered completely, while others remain open but without any visitor services including restrooms and maintenance.

New York’s governor provided funding to the Statue of Liberty monument and Ellis Island so those key attractions could remain open.

The budget wrangling and subsequent shutdown — the third in a year — cast a dark cloud over the US capital already reeling from Defense Secretary Jim Mattis’s resignation announcement Thursday.

The uncertainty pushed Wall Street into a third straight rout on Friday, to end its worst week since late 2008 at the start of the global financial crisis.

“President Trump threw a temper tantrum and convinced House Republicans to push our nation into a destructive Trump Shutdown,” Chuck Schumer, the top opposition Democrat in the Senate, and his House counterpart, fellow Democrat Nancy Pelosi, said in a joint statement.

Trump has dug in on his demand for $5 billion for construction of a wall to curb illegal immigration on the US border with Mexico. Democrats are staunchly opposed, and the absence of an elusive deal means federal funds for dozens of agencies lapsed at midnight Friday.

– ‘Dereliction of duty’ –

The House of Representatives and the Senate are due back in session at noon on Saturday.

But it remains unclear how long the shutdown will last, with Washington unable to accomplish one of its most basic tasks — keeping the government up and running.

“This is a dereliction of duty by Congress and the president,” said David Cox, national president of the American Federation of Government Employees.

Trump voiced hope late Friday that it “will not last long” — after earlier saying he was ready for just that.

His own Republican party still controls both the House and Senate, but in January the House comes under Democratic control.

Governor Ralph Northam of Virginia — a state bordering the US Capitol that is home to many federal workers — urged Trump in a letter Saturday to push immediate action to end the shutdown, saying it “inflicts real harm” on workers.

“I share your desire for strong economic growth throughout the United States, but the current partial government shutdown makes it harder to achieve this goal,” the Democratic governor said.

‘Prepared’ for shutdown

About three-quarters of the government, including the military and the Department of Health and Human Services, is fully funded until the end of September 2019, leaving 25 percent unfunded as of Saturday.

Most NASA employees will be sent home, as will Commerce Department workers and many at the Departments of Homeland Security, Justice, Agriculture and State.

“It’s up to the Democrats whether or not we have a shutdown tonight,” Trump said earlier Friday, blaming his political opponents for the crisis.

“I hope we don’t,” the president added, but “we’re totally prepared for a very long shutdown.”

Should they eventually strike a deal, it could swiftly clear Congress and reach the president’s desk, said Senate Republican Bob Corker.

One focus of discussion was the $1.6 billion in border security funding that was a part of pending Senate legislation, number two Senate Republican John Cornyn told AFP.

But conservatives in the House would likely balk at that figure.

“There’s no agreement,” congressman Mark Meadows, chairman of the House Freedom Caucus of ultra-conservatives, told reporters as he left a closed-door meeting on the Capitol’s Senate side.

“There’s a whole lot of numbers being thrown around,” but a maximum $1.6 billion for border security “is not acceptable.”

‘Hostage’

Trump reversed course Thursday and rejected a measure that had unanimously passed the Senate and was under House consideration.

It would have extended government funding until February 8, but contained no money for a border wall, a pet project Trump has fought for since his presidential campaign.

Democrats painted Trump as the Grinch who stole the year-end deal.

With lawmakers like Meadows and prominent conservative commentators demanding that the president stick to his campaign promises, Trump would not budge on his wall.

The House swiftly passed a bill that fulfilled the president’s demands. It included $5.7 billion in wall funding, and $7.8 billion in disaster relief.

But it stalled at the first hurdle in the Senate.

Trump was scheduled to fly to Florida Friday for his Christmas break, but he postponed the trip.

“This kind of incident is unprecedented anywhere in the world, the disruption of an airport in this way,” Britain’s Transport Secretary Chris Grayling said Friday.

Flights were suspended again at Gatwick on Friday by a drone alert, just hours after being reopened following the original unmanned drone sightings which caused travel chaos that left tens of thousands of passengers stranded over three days.

“We’re going to have to learn very quickly from what’s happened,” Grayling told the BBC.

“There certainly isn’t a straightforward commercial off-the-shelf solution that automatically solves all problems.”

In fact, drone disruption at airports is not quite unprecedented.

In 2016, Dubai International Airport closed three times because of drones being used for leisure nearby. The delayed and rerouted flights cost millions of dollars.

In February 2016, an Airbus A320 flying the Barcelona-Paris route reported a near miss with a drone at 1,600 altitude (one mile up) as it approached Charles de Gaulle airport.

Potential catastrophe

The fear is that if a drone smashed into a passenger plane or was sucked up into one of its engines, its highly flammable lithium battery could cause a catastrophe.

Gatwick chief executive Stewart Wingate wants to see swift, coordinated action.

“These events obviously highlight a wider strategic challenge for aviation in this country which we need to address together with speed — the aviation industry, Government and all the other relevant authorities,” he said.

In 2016, the European Aviation Safety Agency logged 1,400 drone incidents in Europe, up from 606 between 2011 and 2015.

Deputies in the European Parliament approved EU-wide regulations on the use of drones, but still need formal approval from European ministers before taking effect.

Until then, it’s up to individual member states to set their own rules.

In France, civil aviation chiefs have drawn up an interactive map of zones where drones are either restricted or banned. Airports, of course, are off limits.

Charles de Gaulle airport just north of Paris is looking at a long-distance protection system to tackle hostile drones.

But finding high-tech solutions to the drone threat in airport presents particular challenges, says Lucas Le Bell, founder of the start-up Cerbair that specialises in tackling the drone problem.

The noise levels at airports, the security requirements and the saturated level of communications make the task much harder.

His team is working on isolating the frequencies used to control drones, so they can not only detect and locate the devices but take control of them.

Elsewhere in France meanwhile, Mont-de Marsan airbase in the southwest has been working on a more low-tech solution.

The airforce, inspired by a similar experiment in the Netherlands, has been training golden eagles to search and destroy the intruders.

But that system still needs work: earlier this year, one of the eagles attacked a girl after mistaking her vest for the enemy.

Smoke rises day and night from their cooking pits in the La Loma area, which brands itself a hub for producing one of the nation’s favourite foods: “lechon”, or roast suckling pig.

Crews shovel mounds of charcoal into neat rows under the pigs as they cook, gradually darkening into a crispy, caramel-colour.

“In December the demand for pork spikes, starting on the 15th up to the 31st,” said 44-year-old Arturo Ayapana, who has been a lechonero for 15 years. “We start (cooking) at dawn.”

Pork is one of the majority-Catholic country’s year-round staples, a taste introduced during 400 years as a Spanish colony — but consumption goes into overdrive for the holidays.

In La Loma, the roads and sidewalks are darkened and slippery in spots from the grease dripping from cooked pigs, which are hauled between roasting pits and sales stalls on hand carts.

Squealing, still muddy pigs arrive by the truck load, before being slaughtered and skewered on bamboo poles for cooking. They get a final dunking in seasoning before the roasting begins.

Over the next several hours they are slowly spun over the blazing coals by a mechanical crank system that is still turned by hand in many of the pits.

A whole roast pig, which weighs at least 15 kilograms (33 pounds), sells for about $150. That is a small fortune for many in the Philippines, where nearly a quarter of the country lives on less than $2 a day.

“We cannot afford to buy and eat lechon,” Ayapana, the lechonero. “We have to content ourselves with small bites.”

Yet many Filipinos splash out during the holidays, with buyers perusing the pigs displayed on their spits in the rows of lechon stalls in La Loma.

“When you tap it it needs to sound crunchy, like this one,” said farm owner Isiah Elbore as he shopped.

“When it arrives home the skin is the first part to be eaten. It’s a tradition for us (to eat lechon),” he added

Beijing on Thursday confirmed it arrested Canadian Sarah McIver for “working illegally” in the country, following the detention of two other Canadians on national security grounds.

While Canadian authorities said the latest detention appears to be a routine visa case, it has nonetheless exacerbated concerns among Canadian expatriates in China — fearful that they too might be detained over a legal technicality.

“I think most Canadians that are here are living in fear at some level, a fear of losing what they have here, a fear of getting arrested, fear of retribution,” said Ricky Ng-Adam, founder of CoderBunker, a community of international software developers, who regularly travels to Shanghai for work.

“It’s a constant fear,” he said, adding that some of his compatriots self-censor their social media postings and try to keep a low profile.

Former Canadian diplomat Michael Kovrig and China-based business consultant Michael Spavor were detained on December 10 and accused of engaging in activities that “endanger China’s national security”.

Kovrig is a senior advisor at the International Crisis Group think tank, while Spavor facilitates trips to North Korea, including visits by former NBA star Dennis Rodman.

Though no link has officially been made between the three detentions, suspicions are mounting that China is holding at least two of the Canadian nationals in retaliation of Canada’s arrest of Meng Wanzhou, a top executive at Chinese telecom giant Huawei.

The ambiguity surrounding the arrests has also added to the unease, said Canadian Adrian Wu, who frequently travels to China for both work and leisure.

“Even though the third person arrested is not related to the cases of the first two, people see the headlines and immediately think ‘a Canadian got taken’,” he said.

Ottawa has repeatedly said Meng’s arrest was not political but rather part of a judicial process in keeping with an extradition treaty with Washington.

Meng was released on bail last week in Vancouver pending her US extradition hearing on fraud charges related to sanctions-breaking business dealings with Iran.

Ottawa and Washington on Friday stepped up pressure on Beijing and called for the immediate release of Kovrig and Spavor.

Collateral damage

Observers say Canada is increasingly looking like collateral damage in a simmering US-China trade war, with Beijing at the same time working to ease trade tensions with Washington.

“Canada is really just caught in between the US and China, we’re like a scapegoat,” a businesswoman in education told AFP, requesting anonymity for fear of reprisals.

Like a number of Canadian expats, she is using the holidays as an excuse to stay out of the country.

“At least I can remain in North America to see how the situation will play out from a safe distance”, she said.

Others in the Canadian community, speaking on condition of anonymity, said they are making contingency plans to leave the country “just in case” the situation takes a turn for the worse.

It is now up to China to decide how much they want to escalate the situation, said Hugh Stephens, distinguished fellow at the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada.

“The Chinese aren’t going to influence the Canadian court system by whatever they do but there could be a lot of collateral damage, which could seriously potentially damage relationships in the long term,” he said.

Despite the volume of business between Canada and China, people might “start wondering whether or not they’d be targeted” and consider a “long Christmas holiday”, he added.

‘China’s way’

The fallout from the arrests could have implications beyond the immediate Canadian expat community, including researchers who visit China.

On Thursday, representatives of six Berlin-based institutions, which included the European Council for Foreign Relations and the German Marshall Fund, expressed concern about the spate of Canadians detained.

“Developments such as these increase uncertainty and distrust among foreign scholars who regularly conduct research within China, as they fear for their safety,” the joint statement said.

“This will clearly undermine efforts to better understand developments in China.”

Yet some feel there is no need to overreact, calling this “China’s way of dealing with things”.

“I’m not worried about this on a day-to-day basis and I certainly won’t change my daily activities because of a few people who have been detained,” financial analyst Scott Laprise told AFP.

“There’s always a sense at the back of my mind that something could happen, but that’s a part of living in China.”

The Canadian embassy and the Canadian China Business Council did not respond to AFP requests for comment.