Protesters converged on Hong Kong’s international airport Friday, kicking off a three-day sit-in and the first of several rallies planned for the weekend.

Chanting “free Hong Kong!” thousands of black-shirted pro-democracy activists filled the arrivals hall, greeting travelers with pamphlets, posters and banners about the movement that has rocked Asia’s financial center for nine consecutive weeks.

“Dear travelers, welcome to Hong Kong” read the English-language leaflets handed out by the protesters’ “tourist reception.” “You’ve arrived in a broken, torn-apart city, not the one you have once pictured. Yet for this Hong Kong, we fight.”

The airport demonstration is the latest move seeking to disrupt daily life in the city and targeting Hong Kong’s reputation as global hub for transit and commerce. It comes less than one week after a general strike brought the entrepôt to a standstill, disrupting plane, train and road transit.

“We think it’s important for the international community t..

One of New Zealand’s top media regulators called fringe online forum 8chan “the white supremacist killer’s platform of choice,” as he praised a telecommunications provider for barring access to it.

Telecom company Spark moved to ban 8chan following reports that the suspected perpetrator of last weekend’s mass shooting in El Paso, Texas posted a white supremacist rant on the site. 8chan has become known for attracting users with radical and racist views. The suspect in the March mass shooting at mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand reportedly posted a manifesto to the site before the attack that killed 51 people. The site’s creator has said he regrets making it.

New Zealand’s Chief Censor David Shanks, who oversees the office responsible for helping New Zealanders “experience, understand, create and share content in a positive way,” lauded Spark for its decision, calling it “brave and meaningful,” according to the Guardian. He had previously said he would support any service provider ..

In theory, the winner of Guatemala’s Aug. 11 elections will have the power to tackle the serious problems that make the Central American country the primary source of the thousands of migrants showing up at the U.S. southern border each week.

Many voters in Guatemala are looking for solutions to the lack of jobs, high rates of violence and food scarcity that drove so many of their fellow citizens to leave the country in 2018. (Some 116,000 Guatemalans were apprehended last year, according to U.S. Customs and Border Patrol—a quarter of total apprehensions.)

Another major voter concern, according to a July Gallup poll, is the endemic corruption that cripples the state’s ability to channel resources toward fixing those problems. An extremely popular U.N.-backed anti-corruption commission is due to close down in September after the current president, former comedian Jimmy Morales, abruptly kicked its leaders out of the country and refused to renew its mandate. The commission had been in..

(KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia) — Malaysia has filed criminal charges against 17 current and former directors at three Goldman Sachs subsidiaries for their role in the alleged multibillion-dollar ransacking of state investment fund 1MDB.

Malaysian and U.S. prosecutors allege that bond sales organized by Goldman Sachs for 1MDB provided one of the means for associates of former Malaysian leader Najib Razak to steal billions over several years from a fund that was ostensibly set up to accelerate Malaysia’s economic development.

The government in December filed criminal charges against Goldman Sachs and two former executives for breaches of securities laws including making false, misleading statements to investors.

Attorney General Tommy Thomas said Friday the 17 people holding senior posts were charged under the Malaysian Capital Markets and Services Act for conniving to commit the massive fraud.