HONG Kong office workers and schoolmates of a teenage demonstrator shot at close range by a police officer have rallied to condemn police tactics and demand accountability.
The shooting occurred during widespread anti-government demonstrations on China’s National Day.
The 18-year-old, who was shot in the chest on Tuesday, is the first known victim of police gunfire since the protests began in June. He is in hospital where his condition was described as stable.
The officer fired as the teenager, Tsang Chi-kin, struck him with a metal rod. The officer’s use of lethal weaponry is sure to inflame widespread public anger about police tactics.
Deputy Police Commissioner Tang Ping-Keung said the officer had fired at his chest to immobilise the youth quickly.
MEANWHILE, North Korea has fired a ballistic missile from the sea, South Korea’s military said, suggesting Pyongyang may have tested an underwater-launched missile for the first time in three years.
The reported launch came ahead of a resumption of nuclear talks with the US this weekend.
South Korean military radars detected the North Korean missile flying about 280 miles at a maximum altitude of 565 miles after lift-off from a site about 10 miles off the North’s eastern coastal town of Wonsan, defence minister Jeong Kyeong-doo told legislators.
Jeong said he believes the missile’s range is longer because North Korea appears to have deliberately elevated its altitude.
ELSEWHERE, Australia’s prime minister says his country is unlikely to provide the US with internal government communications with an Australian diplomat who is partially responsible for triggering the FBI investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 American presidential election.
President Donald Trump recently asked prime minister Scott Morrison and other foreign leaders to help US attorney general William Barr with an investigation into the origins of the Russia probe that was triggered in part by a tip from an Australian diplomat, Alexander Downer.
FINALLY, authorities have recovered five bodies and are looking for one more still missing after three fishing boats were struck when a bridge collapsed in Taiwan.
The National Fire Agency identified two of the victims as Indonesian and another as Filipino. The other two have not been identified.
The 140-metre-long arched bridge collapsed on Tuesday into a bay on Taiwan’s east coast, about 40 miles southeast of Taipei, the capital.
A typhoon swept by the island earlier, but the weather was sunny when the bridge collapsed.
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