BitGou: Monday Morning Briefing: Hong Kong police criticized over failure to stop attacks

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Hong Kong police faced criticism for an apparent failure to protect anti-government protesters and passersby from attack by what opposition politicians suspected were gang members at a train station on the weekend. Protesters had earlier on Sunday surrounded China’s main representative office in the city and defaced walls and signs and clashed with police. The city’s Beijing-backed leader, Carrie Lam, condemned the attack on China’s liaison office, saying it was a “challenge” to national sovereignty. China’s Foreign Ministry said the behavior of some “radical” Hong Kong protesters violates the bottom line of the “One Country, Two Systems” formula through which Beijing administers the territory.

Israeli forces began demolishing Palestinian homes near a military barrier on the outskirts of Jerusalem, in the face of protests and international criticism. Bulldozers accompanied by hundreds of Israeli police and soldiers moved into Sur Baher, a Palestinian village on the edge of East Jerusalem in an area that Israel captured and occupied in the 1967 Middle East War.

A French television reporter and his crew were arrested while filming protesters blockading a coal port in Australia’s northeastern state of Queensland. Reporter Hugo Clément said he and his television crew from French public broadcaster France 2 were filming protesters blocking access to Indian conglomerate Adani Enterprise’s Abbot Point coal terminal for an environmental documentary about oceans, including the Great Barrier Reef. He said he and his crew would have moved had the police asked them to, but were instead just arrested and put in a police van. One of the cameramen was handcuffed after trying to continue to film when they were being arrested.

U.N. nuclear watchdog chief Yukiya Amano has died, the International Atomic Energy Agency said, just as he was preparing to step down because of an unspecified illness. The 72-year-old Japanese had held the position of IAEA director general since 2009, taking over from Mohamed ElBaradei and steering the U.N. agency through a period of intense diplomacy over Iran’s nuclear program. Here are a few facts about Amano who headed U.N. nuclear watchdog during turbulent period.

Reuters Breakingviews: Shinzo Abe’s so-so victory in Japanese elections over the weekend will keep his focus on the Japanese economy, where it should be. The prime minister’s ruling coalition won a majority in Japan’s upper house, but slack turnout denied him enough seats to scrap the country’s constitutional commitment to pacifism. That clears away an unhelpful political distraction, writes Pete Sweeney.

Iran

Britain was weighing its next moves in the Gulf tanker crisis, with few good options apparent as a recording emerged showing that the Iranian military defied a British warship when it boarded and seized a ship three days ago. Little clue has been given by Britain on how it plans to respond after Iranian Revolutionary Guards rappelled from helicopters and seized the Stena Impero in the Strait of Hormuz on Friday in apparent retaliation for the British capture of an Iranian tanker two weeks earlier. Tensions between Iran and the West have escalated since U.S. sanctions on Iranian oil exports took full effect in May and British naval forces seized an Iranian supertanker. Here is a timeline of recent incidents.

Iran captured 17 spies working for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and some have been sentenced to death, Iranian media reported. Iranian state television published images it said showed the CIA officers who were in touch with the suspected spies. There was no immediate comment on the Iranian allegations by the CIA or U.S. officials.

United States

'Apologize to America,' Donald Trump tells Democratic congresswomen. The U.S. president stepped up his attacks on four Democratic congresswomen who have criticized his policies. “I don’t believe the four Congresswomen are capable of loving our Country. They should apologize to America (and Israel) for the horrible (hateful) things they have said,” Trump said in a Twitter post. Trump ignited controversy last weekend when he tweeted that the four lawmakers, who are all women of color, should “go back” to where they came from if they do not like the United States.

In American politics, few procedures are as arduous or as divisive as the Constitution’s carefully balanced law for ousting a chief executive found to be unfit to serve. A dark cloud of impeachment has threatened Trump for many months, with Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives, where any such effort to remove him from office would begin, divided about whether to proceed. No president has ever been removed as a direct result of it. One, President Richard Nixon, resigned before he could be removed. Two, presidents Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton, were impeached by the House, but not convicted by the Senate.

Exclusive: The U.S. Air Force has suspended paying incentive fees at all 21 military housing bases operated by landlord Balfour Beatty Communities following a Reuters-CBS News report that the company falsified maintenance records at an Oklahoma base to help it qualify for millions of dollars in bonuses. The Air Force previously had suspended fees at three Balfour Beatty bases. Now, it has halted such payments at all 21 company sites after new allegations of improper handling of maintenance records arose at another base in Idaho, Mountain Home Air Force Base, John Henderson, the Air Force assistant secretary for installations, said in a statement to Reuters. Read the Special Report.

Thousands of people are expected to fill the streets of San Juan in massive demonstrations to demand that the U.S. territory’s governor resign over offensive chat messages. Puerto Rico’s governor, Ricardo Rossello, 40, said he would not seek re-election next year but refused to resign. Rossello asked for forgiveness and said he respected the wishes of Puerto Ricans.

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