Asia (except ME & Indian SC)

BEIJING (AP) — China announced sanctions on Friday against the CEOs of American defense contractors Raytheon and Boeing Defense over a major U.S. arms sale to rival Taiwan.

Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning did not specify what the sanctions would be against Gregory Hayes, chairman and CEO of Raytheon Technologies Corp., and Ted Colbert, president and CEO of Boeing Defense, Space and Security.

It wasn’t immediately clear what impact they would have on the executives or their companies, but such sanctions are often mainly symbolic in nature.

SAMARKAND, Uzbekistan (AP) — Chinese President Xi Jinping warned his Central Asian neighbors on Friday not to allow outsiders to destabilize them with “color revolutions” and offered to set up a regional counterterrorism training center.

Xi’s comments at a security summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin and leaders from Central Asia, India and Iran reflect official Chinese anxiety that Western support for pro-democracy and human rights activists is a plot to undermine Xi’s ruling Communist Party and other authoritarian governments.

SHANGHAI, September 15. /TASS/: Work on a joint Russian-Chinese project to create the CR929, a long-haul wide-body airliner, is in the initial stage of designing, the Pengpai information resource reported citing Chief Scientist at the Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (COMAC) Wu Guanghui who spoke at the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in Shanghai on Thursday.

BEIJING, September 15. /TASS/: No country in the world has the right to act as a judge on the Taiwan issue and Beijing will not tolerate any foreign interference, Chinese President Xi Jinping said at a meeting with Russian leader Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of a Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Samarkand on Thursday.

SAMARKAND, September 15. /TASS/: The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) needs to be strengthened as a platform for constructive interaction, Russian President Vladimir Putin said at a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of an SCO summit on Thursday.

JAKARTA, Sept 15 (NNN-Bernama) — Indonesia’s August exports rose 30.15 per cent to US$27.91 billion (US$1=RM4.52) from a year ago driven by non-oil and gas exports.

The highest increase came from animal and vegetable fats and oils, which amounted to US$904.7 million as opposed to oil extracted from the earth, according to Statistics Indonesia. 

The agency said exports between January and August 2022 reached US$194.60 billion, a 35.42 per cent increase from the same period in 2021 for Southeast Asia’s biggest economy.

KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 15 (NNN-Bernama) — The Malaysian ringgit continued to weaken against the US dollar, breaching the 4.53 level which is by far the lowest since the Asian Financial Crisis (AFC), said an analyst.

At 6 pm, the local currency dipped to 4.5340/5365 against the greenback from 4.5265/5285 at Wednesday’s close.

The analyst said with no new catalyst to boost the ringgit’s attraction, investors are keeping their focus mainly on the greenback and other safe-haven assets.

Sept 15 (Reuters) - Japan is expected to waive visa requirements for certain tourists and remove a limit on daily arrivals in October as it aims to benefit from a rebound in global tourism, Nikkei reported on Thursday.

Following the change, Japan will not require visas for short-term travelers from the United States and certain other countries, and will scrap the daily entry cap of 50,000 people, the media outlet said. (https://bit.ly/3eR8c5E)

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida is expected to announce the changes in the coming days, the report said.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — A woman was arrested in South Korea on Thursday on two murder charges from New Zealand, where the bodies of two long-dead children were found last month in abandoned suitcases, authorities said.

Authorities didn’t immediately say if the 42-year-old suspect was the dead children’s mother. New Zealand police had earlier told their South Korean counterparts that the mother might be living in South Korea.

SAMARKAND, Uzbekistan (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin thanked Chinese leader Xi Jinping on Thursday for his “balanced” approach to the Ukrainian crisis and blasted Washington’s “ugly” policies at a meeting that followed a major setback for Moscow on the battlefield.

Speaking at the start of talks with Xi in Uzbekistan, Putin said he was seeking to assuage unspecified “concerns” by China about Ukraine.

“We highly appreciate the well-balanced position of our Chinese friends in connection with the Ukrainian crisis,” Putin said, facing Xi across a long table.