Asia (except ME & Indian SC)

TOKYO, Nov. 3 (Xinhua) -- The fire that destroyed Shuri Castle, a UNESCO World Heritage site in Japan's southernmost prefecture of Okinawa, is likely to have started from the main hall, police investigators said Sunday.

The fire started shortly before 2:40 a.m. local time last Thursday at the historical castle in Naha, the prefectural capital of Okinawa. It engulfed seven wooden buildings, covering a total of more than 4,000 square meters, before it was extinguished around 1:30 p.m. local time on Thursday.

HONG KONG (AP) — China’s state-owned Xinhua News Agency denounced the attack on its office in Hong Kong by pro-democracy protesters as “barbaric” during a melee that marked nearly five months of unrest in the Chinese territory.

More protests are being planned in seven districts Sunday in a sustained push for political reform and genuine autonomy, after the ruling Communist Party vowed to tighten the grip on one of the world’s freest financial hubs.

NONTHABURI, Thailand (AP) — Leaders from fast-growing Southeast Asian economies, China, Japan and other regional powers are aiming for a breakthrough on a free trade deal and an outline for handling territorial tensions at an annual summit that opened near Bangkok on Sunday.

Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha told fellow leaders the summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations should produce a basic agreement on their proposed Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, a 16-member trade bloc encompassing nearly a third of all global trade.

TASHKENT, November 2. /TASS/: Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev considers it necessary to assume joint efforts within the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) to draft common projects for restoration of Afghanistan’s economy.

TASHKENT, November 2. /TASS/: Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev considers it necessary to address Kazakhstan’s initiative to raise the share of mutual settlements in national currencies within the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).

TASHKENT, November 2. /TASS/: Russia is negotiating the creation of a mechanism of dispute settlement at the platform of the World Trade Organization (WTO) with the European Union, Economic Development Minister Maksim Oreshkin told reporters on the sidelines of the meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Council of Heads of Government on Saturday.

2 November 2019; AFP: Major state telecom operators are rolling out 5G wireless advances in China as the country races to close a technology gap with the United States amid a bruising trade war.

The new-generation telecommunication networks move data at blazing speeds, promising economic and technological advantages to countries where they are deployed.

BEIJING, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- China's non-financial investment in countries along the Belt and Road (B&R) stood at 10.04 billion U.S. dollars in the first three quarters, down 6.9 percent year on year, according to the Ministry of Commerce.

The investment took up 12.4 percent of China's total non-financial outbound investment in the same period, and it went mainly to Singapore, Vietnam, Laos, Indonesia, Pakistan, the United Arab Emirates, Thailand, Malaysia, Cambodia and Kazakhstan.

BEIJING, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Vice Premier Liu He, a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chief of the Chinese side of the China-U.S. comprehensive economic dialogue, held a phone conversation at the request of U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin late Friday.

In the phone talks, the two sides had earnest and constructive discussions on properly addressing each other's core concerns, and reached principled consensus.

HONG KONG (AP) — Hong Kong riot police fired multiple rounds of tear gas and used a water cannon Saturday to break up a rally by thousands of masked protesters demanding meaningful autonomy after Beijing indicated it could tighten its grip on the Chinese territory.