AFP, Hong Kong
China’s sole operational aircraft carrier arrived in Hong Kong for the first time today in a display of military might less than a week after a high-profile visit by president Xi Jinping.
Xi’s trip marked 20 years since Hong Kong was handed back to China by Britain, and analysts said his visit left little doubt that Beijing viewed the city as a destabilising hotbed of unacceptable political dissent.
28 killed in bloody Mexican prison fight
Reuters, Mexico
At least 28 inmates were killed in a brutal prison fight on Thursday in the Mexican Pacific resort of Acapulco, in one of the worst outbreaks of violence in the country’s troubled penal system in recent years. Acapulco is the biggest city in Guerrero, one of Mexico’s most lawless states and a centre of opium poppy production that has been a major concern to US officials.
Spain hit by deadly bacteria threatening olive trees
AFP, Madrid
A deadly bacteria that infected thousands of olive trees in Italy has been detected for the first time in mainland Spain, the world’s top producer of olive oil, a regional government official said Thursday.
The Xylella fastidiosa pathogen, which dries out trees leaving their leaves looking scorched, was found in June in almond trees near the town of Guadalest in the eastern region of Valencia, Elena Cebrian, head of the regional government’s agriculture department, told AFP.
Ten Egyptian soldiers killed in Sinai bomb attacks
Reuters, Cairo
At least 10 Egyptian soldiers were killed, including a colonel, and several injured in two suicide attacks on army checkpoints in northern Sinai on Friday, security sources said.
Two vehicles were blown up while passing through two checkpoints on a road outside the border city of Rafah, the sources said. No group claimed responsibility for the attacks. Egypt faces an Islamist insurgency led by Islamic State in the rugged and thinly populated northern Sinai.
, where hundreds of soldiers and police have been killed since 2013, when the military ousted Islamist president Mohamed Mursi after mass protests.
