Not ‘accusing’ Canada, says China, a day after Xi rebuked Trudeau

BEIJING: President Xi Jinping did not “accuse” Canadian PM Justin Trudeau during a short interaction in Bali on the sidelines of the G20 summit, the Chinese foreign ministry said on Thursday, a day after the Chinese leader was seen and heard confronting Trudeau over apparent information leaks from a bilateral meet.

An expert has described the incident of Xi rebuking Trudeau in public, in what was their first talks in over three years, as “highly offensive” and showing disdain for a foreign leader.

Canadian broadcasters published video footage on Wednesday, which showed the two leaders talking to each other on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Bali in Indonesia. A translator for Xi can be heard in the video telling Trudeau that “everything we discussed was leaked to the paper(s), that’s not appropriate”.

Speaking to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, former Canadian diplomat to China, Charles Burton, said he found Xi’s language to be “quite dismissive and threatening”, indicating China’s lack of respect for Canada.

BANGKOK: A former British envoy, an Australian economic adviser and a Japanese journalist arrived in Thailand late on Thursday after being freed by Myanmar’s junta in an amnesty releasing almost 6,000 prisoners. Since a military coup last year, Myanmar has seen a bloody crackdown on dissent in which thousands of people have been jailed.

COLOMBO: Sri Lanka has postponed a round of debt restructuring talks initially expected to be held on Thursday to allow central bank and treasury officials to provide clarifications sought by the country’s creditors, its state minister of finance said. The island nation kicked off the talks in September after securing a preliminary $2.9 billion bailout with IMF.

BEIJING: China’s Covid cases surged again as top cities struggle to get persistent outbreaks under control without deploying the one-size-fitsall Covid Zero restrictions that Beijing has said must be avoided. Nationwide, there were 23,132 new cases, the highest since April and nearing the all-time high reached during the worst of Shanghai’s massive outbreak earlier this year.

WASHINGTON: FBI director Christopher Wray said on Thursday the agency is investigating several cases in which people sought to fly drones equipped with homemade bombs within the United States. “We are investigating, even as we speak, several instances within the US of attempts to weaponise drones with homemade IEDs,” Wray told a Senate hearing.