World

HONG KONG — Hong Kong police used pepper spray on Sunday to drive back hundreds of protesters angry at China's decision to intervene in a row over whether two pro-independence lawmakers should be barred from the city's legislature.

In chaotic scenes reminiscent of mass pro-democracy protests in 2014, demonstrators charged metal fences set up by police outside China's liaison office in the semi-autonomous city.

Protesters used umbrellas to shield themselves from the spray as they tried to approach the building, while some threw water and water bottles at police. 

"We are quite shocked. We just wanted to express our demands at the liaison office," Cas Wong, a 19-year-old student, told AFP.

At least one person was seen taken away by multiple officers before scuffles broke out.

Police warned protesters they were involved in an "unlawful assembly" and told them to disperse, as they donned riot gear.

Demonstrators later occupied a major intersection near the liaison office, leaving dozens of trams and buses stuck on the road.

They again charged police lines in an attempt to approach the building and were pushed back and sprayed by helmeted officers.

The protest began with a peaceful city centre march in the afternoon. Organisers said 13,000 people took part in that, while 4,000 people rallied outside the liaison office.

Police estimates were not immediately available.

Hong Kong's pro-Beijing government is trying to bar newly appointed pro-independence legislators Baggio Leung and Yau Wai-ching from taking their seats in the Legislative Council (Legco) after they deliberately misread their oaths of office last month.

As fears grow that Beijing — to whom any independence talk is treasonous — is tightening its grip on the city, China has announced that its parliament will interpret Hong Kong's constitution, which states that council members must swear allegiance to the "Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China".

The decision of the National People's Congress Standing Committee is expected to be announced on Monday.

China is reviewing the issue even though a Hong Kong court is also considering the matter, a move which local lawyers say erodes the independence of the city's judiciary. 

Hong Kong was handed over by Britain to China in 1997 under a "one country, two systems" deal which guaranteed its rights and freedoms for 50 years.

There are deep concerns those liberties, enshrined in the city's constitution known as the Basic Law, are under threat.

In Sunday's demonstration protesters carried banners reading: "Chinese law interpretation tramples on Hong Kong people."

"Hong Kong has its own legal system, it should not be controlled by Chinese authorities," Alex Wong told AFP.

"We must tell the government we are not happy," the 35-year-old office clerk said.

Monday's expected announcement will mark the fifth time since the handover that China has interpreted Hong Kong's constitution.

The lawmakers at the heart of the controversy have previously said the interpretation would deal a "lethal blow" to the city.

Yau and Leung won seats in September's citywide polls, in which several new lawmakers advocating self-determination or independence swept to victory.

The pair have yet to be sworn into Legco, after their first oath attempt last month was declared invalid. They draped themselves in banners reading "Hong Kong is not China" and altered the wording of their pledges to include derogatory terms and expletives.

WASHINGTON — Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton packed their schedules with last minute campaign events Sunday, two days out from an election that has gripped the world.

Clinton is banking on star power to lock in her narrow poll lead, hosting back-to-back weekend pop concerts with Beyonce and Katy Perry and booking a date with President Barack Obama.

For his part Trump has embarked on a cross-country odyssey through Iowa, Minnesota, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Florida, North Carolina and New Hampshire.

The latest major survey, an ABC/Washington Post tracker released early Sunday, gave Clinton a 5 percentage point 48-43 lead. Polling averages, however, are closer.

The final 48-hour programmes of both campaigns suggest that the race is closer than either side admits.

In the latest sign of the mounting tension and ugly mood, Trump was briefly hustled off stage in Reno, Nevada, on Saturday in a false gun scare.

Trump was unruffled, although his son retweeted a message implying it was an “assassination attempt”. The Secret Service said that agents found no weapon.

The unrest broke out when a protester trying to hold up a “Republicans against Trump” sign was wrestled to the ground and attacked by Trump supporters. The man, who said he was a Republican, was briefly detained then released.

Clinton’s camp mocked the 70-year-old tycoon’s scattershot approach to the electoral map as a sign of panic.

But the 69-year-old former secretary of state herself added an extra planned stopover in Michigan, a state that fellow Democrat Obama won easily in 2012.

At his campaign stops the billionaire Republican remained triumphalist.

“In three days we are going to win the great state of Colorado and we are going to win back the White House,” Trump promised late Saturday in Denver, Colorado.

“You’re going to be so happy. We’re going to start winning again,” he intoned, urging voters to cast ballots in person to avoid the risk of fraud in postal voting.

Trump hit his key themes: promises to tear up free trade agreements, expel undocumented migrants, rebuild an allegedly depleted US military and purge Washington of corruption.

And his fans roared back the same three-word chants: “Build the wall!” “Drain the swamp!” “Lock her up!”

‘Just has no path’ 

Clinton’s late decision to head to Michigan with Obama on Monday and to add a midnight rally in North Carolina as election day begins raised eyebrows.

Campaign manager Robby Mook dismissed suggestions that Clinton is trying to shore up her crumbling northern firewall.

“Donald Trump has to win all of these battleground races,” he said. “If we win Pennsylvania and Florida, he just has no path.”

 Outside of the United States, Washington’s allies fear that a candidate who threatens to review US treaty alliances is within striking distance of the White House.

There was scorn in Britain, where Trump effigies were burned instead of local hate figures on the traditional November 5 Bonfire Night.

And in Germany, leading news weekly Der Spiegel on its front page depicted both candidates covered in the mud of a dirty campaign.

“When I look at Washington, I am worried,” German President Joachim Gauck told the magazine, citing Trump’s “unpredictability”.

 US foes like Russia and Iran have not hidden their mirth at the turmoil rocking US democracy.

Global markets fear that a protectionist, inexperienced demagogue could plunge the United States or even the world economy back into recession.

The polls are unclear. Clinton still enjoys a narrow nationwide advantage, a 2.1 percentage point lead according to a poll average by tracker RealClearPolitics.

But the election will be won or lost in the US electoral college, and perhaps a dozen states are in play. Trump’s camp believes it can pick off enough of them on November 8. 

His campaign has been torpedoed and holed but not yet sunk by allegations of sexual assault and the candidate’s own off-colour outbursts.

Meanwhile, the long-running saga of Clinton’s inappropriate use of a private e-mail server — fed by announcements and leaks from FBI investigators — continues to taint her pitch as the competent professional.

As the race nears the end, Clinton is trying to crack the pessimism with an upbeat message, bringing in heavyweight support from Obama and megastars like Beyonce and her husband Jay-Z.

‘Vote for the future’ 

“We are seeing tremendous momentum, large numbers of people turning out, breaking records in a lot of places,” Clinton declared at a rained out rally in Florida, in reference to the early and mail voting permitted in several US states.

“Let’s vote for the future!” she added through the downpour, urging those who had already cast ballots to help get their friends to the polls.

Earlier, at a Miami event, her supporters launched into a three-word get out the vote chant of their own: “Knock on doors! Knock on doors!”

 Polling and anecdotal evidence suggests that Clinton supporters, especially previously underrepresented Latino voters, have come out strongly in Nevada and Florida.

But Trump gets big and enthusiastic crowds at his rallies. “And you know what? I don’t need Beyonce and I don’t need Jay-Z,” he boasts.

HIROSHIMA, Japan — The call for world peace is not without rhyme or reason for Katsuko Kuwanoto, a survivor of the 1945 Hiroshima atomic bombing.

The 77-year-old A-bomb survivor was not physically hurt by the bomb, but she witnessed its impact on people in her community, including her mother, as well as the devastation around the city.

When the bomb dropped on August 6, 1945, Kuwanoto, a first grader then, was at a school, some 3.5km away from the hypocentre. 

Due to previous military air strikes, Kuwanoto and her elder sister had to move to a school far away from the city centre, where the majority of strikes hit. They stayed at their aunt’s house over the weekdays and visited home on the weekends. 

Their mother stayed alone at their house in the city centre, and their father was fighting in the war.  

“My classmates and I were playing in the schoolyard when we heard the big explosion, so we ran inside… the window glass shattered, and one of the girls playing beside the window was injured. Blood was coming out of her body like a fountain,” Kuwanoto said at a recent meeting with journalists.

The teacher held the girl in her arms and was running around in the yard not knowing what to do, she recalled, adding that all children were following their teacher.

This was Kuwanoto’s first encounter with the bombing, but not the last.

Her aunt came to school to take her home, but they all were very concerned about Kuwanoto’s mother. 

“My brother decided to go to the city centre to check on my mother, but he was unable to proceed for more than 500 metres, as the entire city was on fire,” she said with tears in her eyes.

The first grader then saw the dead bodies covering the surface of the Ota River and on the riverside. The uncovered bodies were reeking in the summer heat, she said. 

“At this point, we stopped looking for my mother.”

It turned out that her mother was having breakfast at home when the bomb hit, and she was unable to free herself from underneath the collapsed roof until her neighbour came to help.

“Only my mother, the neighbour who saved her and another neighbour they saw [covered] in blood were able to survive,” Kuwanoto’s said, adding that the three survivors called the names of the other residents of the area, but nobody answered.

It took a week for the fires to die down, and only then the mother was able to cross a mountain to reach the aunt’s house.

“I was shocked by her skin colour when I first saw her. She was extremely white without physical injuries,” said the survivor. 

“At the time nobody in Hiroshima knew that it was a nuclear bomb… they called it pikadon, which means a flashing explosion.”

Slowly, Kuwanoto mother started feeling constant fatigue, falling down and bleeding frequently. 

She was diagnosed with breast cancer that shortly spread to her lungs, neck and brain. She went into a coma and died.

The other bomb survivors went through the same symptoms.

Atomic bombing survivor Katsuko Kuwanoto points to a map of Hiroshima during a recent meeting with journalists in the Japanese city (Photo by Dana Al Emam)

The saddest part of the story, according to Kuwanoto, was that the majority of the victims were high school students who were working at shops in the city centre to replace the adults who had gone to war.

“Sirens did not go off when the military aircraft carrying the A-bomb approached, so the students did not rush to shelters,” she said, noting that sirens generally alarmed people when military aircraft approached. 

Another shock was when Kuwanoto returned to school after conditions calmed down. 

The school was damaged, so classes were very crowded, and many students had been orphaned.  

Stories of her classmates and the affected community started to slowly unpack, leaving her with a lifelong wound. 

“I refused to share stories or talk about the bombing over the past 20 years, but as many A-bomb survivors have passed away and many of those alive were willing to speak, I felt I had a message to deliver to younger generations through storytelling,” she said.

However, delivering two talks daily to school students has not made it easier for Kuwanoto to accept the past, she said, adding that she sometimes loses her appetite. 

“I still feel stuck in the past.”

US President Barack Obama’s visit to Hiroshima in May after the Group of Seven summit did not mean much to Kuwanoto, who saw the visit as just another stop on the itinerary of the American leader.

“Just because the Japanese did not ask for compensations at the time of the bombing does not mean that America should not compensate them,” she said.

All countries and world powers must immediately stop the arms race, stressed Kuwanoto, calling on world leaders to lend an ear to the large number of peaceful protests against nuclear bombs at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial all year round.

The atomic bombings of the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed around 80,000 Japanese people in a matter of hours, a figure that increased to over 140,000 by the end of 1945. The overall number of victims reached 250,000 over the following years. 

SEOUL, South Korea — Tens of thousands of South Koreans poured into the streets of downtown Seoul on Saturday, using words including "treason" and "criminal" to demand that President Park Geun-hye step down amid an explosive political scandal.

The protest, the largest anti-government demonstration in the capital in nearly a year, came a day after Park apologised on live television amid rising suspicion that she allowed a mysterious confidante to manipulate power from the shadows.

Holding banners, candles and colorful signs that read "Park Geun-hye out" and "Treason by a secret government", a sea of demonstrators filled a large square in front of an old palace gate and the nearby streets, singing and thunderously applauding speeches calling for the ouster of the increasingly unpopular president.

They then shifted into a slow march in streets around City Hall, shouting "Arrest Park Geun-hye," ''Step down, criminal" and "We can't take this any longer," before moving back to the square and cheering on more speeches that continued into the night.

"Park should squarely face the prosecution's investigation and step down herself. If she doesn't, politicians should move to impeach her," said Kim Seo-yeon, one of the many college students who participated in the protest.

"She absolutely lost all authority as president over the past few weeks," he said.

Earlier in the week, prosecutors arrested Choi Soon-sil, the daughter of a late cult leader and a longtime friend of Park, and detained two former presidential aides over allegations that they pressured businesses into giving $70 million to two foundations Choi controlled.

There are also allegations that Choi, despite having no government job, regularly received classified information and meddled in various state affairs, including the appointment of ministers and policy decisions.

"I came out today because this is not the country I want to pass on to my children," said another demonstrator, Choi Kyung-ha, a mother of three. "My kids have asked me who Choi Soon-sil was and whether she's the real president, and I couldn't provide an answer."

 Choi Tae-poong, a 57-year-old retiree, said he came out to protest because he thought the situation had reached a point where "no more patience is allowed”.

"I cannot bear this anymore," he said.

Police estimated the crowd at 45,000, although protest organisers said about 200,000 people turned out.

Police used dozens of buses and trucks to create tight perimeters in streets around the square in front of the palace gate to close off paths to the presidential office and residence. Thousands of officers dressed in fluorescent yellow jackets and full riot gear stood in front of and between the vehicles as they closely monitored the protesters.

Smaller protests have taken place in the past few weeks in Seoul and other cities amid growing calls for Park to step down. While several politicians have individually called for Park's ouster, opposition parties have yet to attempt a serious push for her resignation or impeachment in fear of negatively impacting next year's presidential election.

"How many more astonishing things must happen before this country changes for the better?" said Park Won-soon, the opposition mayor of Seoul and a potential presidential candidate, vowing to push for the president's resignation.

President Park has tried to stabilise the situation by firing eight aides and nominating three new top Cabinet officials, including the prime minister, but opposition parties have described her personnel reshuffles as a diversionary tactic.

One national poll released Friday had Park's approval rating at 5 per cent, the lowest for any president in South Korea since the country achieved democracy in the late 1980s following decades of military dictatorship.

In Friday's televised apology, Park commented on the corruption allegations surrounding Choi and her former aides and vowed to accept a direct investigation into her actions, but avoided the more damning allegation that Choi perhaps had interfered with important government decisions on policy and personnel.

Opposition parties, sensing weakness, immediately threatened to push for her ouster if she doesn't distance herself from domestic affairs and transfer the duties to a prime minister chosen by parliament. The parties have also called for a separate investigation into the scandal led by a special prosecutor.

Park has 15 months left in her term. If she resigns before the end of it, South Korean laws require the country to hold an election to pick a new president within 60 days.

KUNDUZ, Afghanistan — A NATO air strike killed at least 30 Afghan civilians, including women and children, on Thursday in the volatile northern province of Kunduz, officials said, after a Taliban assault there left two American soldiers dead.

The air strike, which occurred early Thursday, triggered emotionally-charged protests in the provincial capital, with the victims’ relatives rallying outside the governor’s office while carrying the bodies of dead children.

The carnage underscores worsening insecurity after the Taliban last month overran Kunduz city for the second time in a year, as NATO-backed Afghan forces struggle to beat back the insurgents.

“Afghan forces and coalition troops conducted a joint operation against the Taliban insurgents,” Provincial Spokesman Mahmood Danish told AFP. “In the bombardment 30 Afghan civilians were martyred and 25 others were wounded.”

 Police spokesman Mahmoodullah Akbari gave the same toll to AFP, adding that the dead included infants aged as young as three months and other children.

“They were asleep when their house came under attack by coalition troops,” Akbari said.

In a brief statement on Twitter, NATO conceded it was behind the air strike.

“Air strikes were conducted in #Kunduz to defend friendly forces under fire. All civilian casualty claims will be investigated,” it said.

The strike occurred on the outskirts of the city after a firefight killed two US soldiers and three Afghan special forces during an anti-Taliban operation in Kunduz.

It was not immediately clear if the two incidents were related.

The firefight occurred as American soldiers were assisting Afghan troops to clear a Taliban position and disrupt the group’s operations in Kunduz, US forces said in a separate statement.

“On behalf of all of US Forces — Afghanistan, today’s loss is heartbreaking and we offer our deepest condolences to the families and friends of our service members who lost their lives today,” said John Nicholson, the top US and NATO commander in Afghanistan.

“Despite today’s tragic event, we are steadfast in our commitment to help our Afghan partners defend their nation,” he added, without disclosing the names of the dead soldiers.

Forgotten conflict 

The killings come just days before the US presidential election. 

During three lengthy debates between presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, Afghanistan got scarcely a passing mention — even though the situation there will be an urgent matter for the new president.

Either one of them will inherit America’s longest war with no end in sight.

The US military, which leads a NATO mission to train and assist local forces after their combat mission ended in 2014, often gives upbeat assessments about Afghan military performance.

But as Afghan military forces near the end of a second year leading security operations without full NATO assistance, they are sustaining heavy casualties.

The Taliban’s apparent strategic goal in 2016 is to seize another provincial capital like they briefly did in Kunduz last year, in a stinging blow to Afghan forces.

They have launched multiple assaults in recent months including in Kunduz, Lashkar Gar in poppy-growing Helmand province and Tarinkot, the capital of Uruzgan province.

The worsening conflict has prompted US forces to step up air strikes to support their struggling Afghan counterparts, fuelling the perception they are increasingly being drawn back into the conflict.

CALAIS, France — The last buses out of the Calais “Jungle” left the French camp on Thursday, carrying 291 migrants, mostly couples and women with children, to shelters around the country.

The transfers end a 10-day operation to clear the camp on France’s north coast, where more than 6,000 migrants — mostly Afghans, Sudanese and Eritreans — had been living in miserable conditions.

“This morning we completed the task of providing the migrants with shelter,” senior Calais official Vincent Berton announced.

The families and children driven away Thursday had been living in an NGO-run centre near the sea of shacks and tents that were razed last week after the bulk of the migrants had left.

Most of the asylum-seekers had travelled thousands of kilometres to Calais in the hope of illegally crossing the Channel into nearby Britain.

Under pressure from French authorities, they eventually agreed to accept a bed and a chance at asylum in France rather than be deported.

On Wednesday, more than 1,600 unaccompanied minors who were put up in a container park for a week were dispatched to centres around France, while waiting to hear whether they will be allowed into Britain.

Since mid-October, Britain has taken in more than 300 children from the Jungle and has promised to take hundreds more.

Prime Minister Manuel Valls said he was “very proud” that the operation to clear one of the biggest shantytowns in western Europe had gone off peacefully.

The last of the shelters were demolished on Monday.

Valls said the Jungle, one of the most visible symbols of Europe’s failure to tackle the biggest influx of migrants since World War II, had been a blight on France’s reputation.

“It gave an image of France that I don’t want to see — men, women and children living in disgraceful conditions,” he said.

Yet less than 300 kilometres from Calais, around 2,000 migrants are living in similar conditions on the streets of Paris.

Authorities are expected to soon clear the camp under a railway bridge in the French capital’s northeastern Stalingrad district.

EAU CLAIRE, United States — Republican Donald Trump has spent much of the past week in enemy territory, desperate to poach a Democratic state and carve a perilously narrow path to victory in his White House race against Hillary Clinton.

Polls, history, demographics and Trump’s abrasive rhetoric are not on his side, even as he seeks to capitalise on never-ending revelations about his rival’s use of a private e-mail server while secretary of state.

But with the campaign in its final week, the braggadocious billionaire is determined to make a last-gasp play for a blue state or two that could put him over the top — if he holds on to Republican ground and seizes the crucial battleground of Florida.

On Sunday he was in Colorado and New Mexico, both of which voted for President Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, and are leaning toward Clinton.

On Monday it was Michigan, then on Tuesday it was Pennsylvania, also favouring Clinton. Both states have voted Democratic in presidential elections since 1992. Also on Tuesday, Trump visited Wisconsin, whose Democratic streak goes back further, to 1988.

But Trump’s team is showing some swagger in blue states.

“I feel like it’s going to happen,” Carol Robertson, a 57-year-old on disability assistance, told AFP at Trump’s rally in Eau Claire.

Polls have shown Clinton reliably ahead in Wisconsin for several months, and she is leading by 5.7 percentage points now, according to the latest RealClearPolitics aggregate.

Robertson dismissed polls as unreliable, and said a silent majority will rise up in Wisconsin and elsewhere.

“People are afraid to say ‘I support Trump,’” but they’ll vote for him in the privacy of the polling booth, she said.

‘Logical target’ 

In his quest to reach the 270 electoral votes needed to prevail on November 8, Trump is aiming to snatch Rust Belt states like Ohio, a bona fide swing state which voted twice for Obama but where working-class voters feel disenfranchised with the collapse of the manufacturing sector.

If Trump holds all the states Republican Mitt Romney won in 2012, and wins Ohio and Florida, he is still short. He needs to break into Democratic states.

“If you look at the electoral map, there’s little question that Trump has to find some of these blue states to flip over,” said Geoffrey Peterson, chair of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire.

Wisconsin could be “a logical target” because of its large manufacturing base, which has shrunk in recent decades.

Its population is also considerably whiter than the national average, which means a broader potential base for Trump who draws heavily from white working class males.

But Peterson said it won’t be about Trump winning over new voters at this point: “It’s a get-out-the-vote race.”

 Trump’s deputy campaign director David Bossie stressed that the team is knocking on millions of doors in Wisconsin, Ohio and elsewhere.

“It’s going to be a very, very close race, and they need everybody out to be... ambassadors for Donald Trump,” Wisconsin Republican Party Chairman Brad Courtney said.

Democratic stalwarts insist the state is safe.

“Trump is wasting his time in Wisconsin,” said Stephanie Bloomingdale, secretary-treasurer of the AFL-CIO labour union in the state.

“They know when they’re being conned by a billionaire brat.”

 Clinton voters aren’t so sure.

“A lot of Democrats don’t want to vote this year, because they don’t like either of the options,” said 21-year-old college student Olivia Knutsen, who protested Trump’s visit to Eau Claire.

Such a depressed turnout “is a big reason we’re kind of scared it could go either way”, she said.

‘No defence’ of Clinton 

Broghan Reilly, who cast his ballot for Libertarian Gary Johnson in early voting on Tuesday, said Wisconsin’s “populist cities” like Eau Claire, Milwaukee and Madison tend to be more Democratic.

“But you go even a mile or two outside and hit a corn field and all you see is Trump signs,” said Reilly, who owns a chiropractic business.

Jim Nichols, 64, was drinking dollar beers at The Joynt, a dive bar in Eau Claire, after protesting at the Trump rally. It felt bittersweet to him.

As he squared off with Trump supporters, he said, “I was nervous because I have no defence of Hillary.”

 Nichols was a diehard Bernie Sanders backer in the Democratic primaries, but with the “scary” prospects of a Trump upset in Wisconsin, he is taking no chances and voting for Clinton.

Bloomingdale, the AFL-CIO representative, acknowledged the vote will be close. 

But she was confident Wisconsinites would promote “common sense ideas to protect the common good”, noting the state was first in the nation to institute workman’s compensation and that the idea of social security was born in Wisconsin.

But the Republican Party was born in Wisconsin too, in 1854. And current US House Speaker Paul Ryan, the nation’s highest-ranking elected Republican, is a favorite son.

Even though Ryan has a longstanding and public feud with Trump, the speaker announced he cast his vote for the party’s nominee last week.

ZHUHAI, China — China and Russia took a step closer on Wednesday to the joint development of a long-haul jet to challenge Boeing and Airbus, displaying a model of the unnamed plane that would compete with Western rivals.

State-owned planemakers Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (COMAC) and United Aircraft Corp. (UAC) of Russia said they had started the hunt to find suppliers, as they presented a mock-up of the wide-body jet at Airshow China.

Neither firm gave details on financing or technical specifications for what Western analysts call a politically-driven initiative that will be difficult to pull off and is likely to carry a high price tag.

China opened the show on Tuesday in the southern city of Zhuhai with a brief flypast of its J-20 stealth fighter, in a demonstration of military clout.

Both countries are currently developing smaller narrow-body jets to compete with the best-selling Airbus and Boeing types.

Guo Bozhi, general manager of COMAC’s widebody department, said a 50-50 joint venture based in Shanghai will start operations this year.

First announced in 2014, the project has so far been slow to materialise. The firms have said they want conduct a maiden flight in 2022 and begin deliveries in 2025 or later.

Western industry analysts consider the target challenging, but more realistic than recent aircraft programmes that sought results in 5-7 years and came in late.

“A wide-body jet is an extremely complicated product, which will require a lot of skills [to develop] and require broad industrial knowledge,” Guo told reporters. “China and Russia each have their own advantages.”

Descriptions accompanying the model showed the firms ultimately envision three variants, based on a basic version that will seat 280 and have a range of up to 12,000 kilometres .

Supplier search

The decision to base the venture in Shanghai was a “mutual decision”, Guo said at the event, attended by COMAC Chairman Jin Zhuanglong, UAC’s Chief Executive Yury Slyusar and Russia’s Minister of Trade and Industry Denis Manturov. Guo declined to say how much each party had invested in the project.

A global effort to assess potential suppliers is now under way, said COMAC, which is separately pushing its own C919 narrow-body passenger jet towards a long-delayed maiden flight, now aimed for the end of 2016 or early 2017.

US firms Honeywell and United Technologies Corporation said on Wednesday they discussed the China-Russia jet with COMAC officials at the airshow, without commenting on the nature or subject of the contacts.

“We will choose suppliers who have rich experience in development, whose products are competitive globally, and who can continually guarantee quality from the development stage until the planes go into operation,” Guo said.

A key decision will be what engines to use. Industry sources speculate the jet could use Western engines.

Another potentially tricky issue will be how the work should be divided, a subject which caused years of wrangling at Europe’s Airbus, which began in 1970 as a consortium of nations and took more than two decades to make a significant impact.

Though a 50-50 JV, analysts view the Chinese side as being the more influential in the project.

The firm’s Shanghai headquarters tells “where the balance of power is going to be and that reflects the size of the Chinese domestic market”, said Sash Tusa, analyst at London-based consultancy Agency Partners. 

SRINAGAR, India — Seven civilians were killed and nine others wounded by Pakistani shelling in Kashmir on Tuesday, Indian officials said, as cross-border firing by the two countries’ troops escalated in the disputed region.

A police officer said five people, including two children, were killed by Pakistani shelling in Ramgarh sector. The officer spoke on condition of anonymity in keeping with department policy.

Civil administrator Pawan Kotwal said two women also died in Rajouri sector in cross-border firing. He said at least nine civilians were injured.

Kotwal said hundreds of civilians living in villages along the frontier have been evacuated to safer places in recent weeks and are spending nights in government-run shelters.

An army officer and a border guard official in the Indian-controlled portion of Kashmir said Indian soldiers “befittingly” replied to what they described an “unprovoked” violation of a 2003 cease-fire accord.

The officers, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to brief the media, said the exchange of fire was continuing at several places along the frontier.

The Indian and Pakistani armies guard the Line of Control that divides the two parts of Kashmir. Each country also has a separate paramilitary border force that guards the frontier separating Indian-controlled Kashmir and the Pakistani province of Punjab.

An Indian soldier was killed and four others were wounded when troops from the two nuclear-armed countries exchanged mortar and gunfire in Rajouri sector on Monday night.

Also Monday, the Pakistani army said Indian troops opened fire across the Line of Control, killing four civilians and wounding six others.

Troops from the two countries have regularly traded fire since last month, when India said it carried out “surgical strikes” against militants in the Pakistan-controlled part of Kashmir. Pakistan dismissed the claim and called on India to produce evidence to back it up.

The tensions have also escalated at the government level, and last week each nation expelled a diplomat.

Both sides accuse the other of initiating the firing.

Two of the three wars between India and Pakistan since 1947 have been fought over their competing claims to Kashmir. Each has administered part of Kashmir since 1947.

CINCINNATI, Ohio — With one week to go until Election Day, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump were barnstorming battleground states Tuesday, as the Democratic nominee tried to pivot away from attacks on her protection of US secrets.

Eager to divert the conversation from a renewed FBI inquiry into her use of a private e-mail server while secretary of state, Clinton on Monday warned against her White House rival being allowed control of US nuclear launch codes.

With no sign anything concrete will come of the FBI probe before polling day, Clinton believes she can face down the challenge and return to the issue of Trump’s fitness to lead.

Both candidates were keeping up a manic campaign schedule targeting key swing states.

Trump was scheduled to speak in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin on Tuesday, while Clinton was hopscotching across must-win Florida. 

Democratic surrogates including President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, husband and former president Bill Clinton, running mate Tim Kaine and primary opponent Bernie Sanders were fanning out across battleground states to stump for votes.

Clinton, pointing to Trump’s numerous angry blowups on the trail and often confused responses to questions on security issues, painted her Republican rival as a dangerous hothead who could trigger Armageddon.

“Imagine him in the Oval Office facing a real crisis,” the 69-year-old Democrat said of Trump, a 70-year-old New York property mogul turned reality television star.

“Imagine him plunging us into a war because somebody got under his very thin skin. I hope you’ll think about that when you cast your vote.”

‘Daisy girl’ 

Clinton issued an ad recalling the renowned 1964 “Daisy Girl” television spot that then president Lyndon Johnson used to paint his challenger Barry Goldwater as a danger to all human life.

Trump meanwhile has done nothing to moderate his own rhetoric, storming through a series of usually Democratic states in an effort to break Clinton’s apparent lock on the electoral college.

His attacks on Clinton’s private e-mail server — which he alleges put US secrets at risk — are aimed at shifting momentum in a race where she was increasingly seen as the prohibitive favourite. 

But the first major poll to have been partly conducted after Friday’s bombshell news that the FBI has relaunched its e-mail probe showed little movement in Trump’s direction with one week to go. 

The NBC News/SurveyMonkey weekly poll showed Clinton’s six percentage point national lead essentially unchanged since last week.

Allegations Clinton put America at risk by using a private server were thrust back into the spotlight when FBI Director James Comey said the bureau would study a newly uncovered batch of e-mails to see if they are “pertinent”.

 Clinton and her supporters were furious that Comey made his announcement without providing any new evidence of wrongdoing but, after three days of rage, Clinton took a more emollient tone Monday.

“I made a mistake. I’m not making any excuses,” she said, inviting the FBI to pursue its probe and suggesting that the agency would find, as it had in July, that she has no case to answer.

“It wasn’t even a close call,” she said. “I think most people have moved on. They are looking and focused on ‘OK, who is going to be the next president and the commander-in-chief?’”

‘Constitutional crisis’ 

True to form, Trump was not letting go, adding the threat of constitutional crisis to his oft-stated claim that Clinton’s e-mail use was criminal in intent and the worst scandal since Watergate. 

A Clinton victory, he warned supporters, “would mire our government and our country in a constitutional crisis that we cannot afford”.

 He predicted “a criminal trial for a sitting president”, and chastised Clinton for seeking to blame others for a scandal that has lasted for 20 months: “She has brought all of this on herself.”

 University of Virginia politics professor Larry Sabato said the FBI development has changed the race’s dynamics, even if Clinton’s polling data has not taken an immediate hit.

“She would have been running a victory lap this week, running up the score,” he told AFP. “Instead, she’s trying to hold on.”

 But Sabato added that Trump’s strategy of touring Democratic-leaning states reflects a stark truth: he needs to flip at least one of them in order to win, and even that may not be enough.

“He is going to have to turn a blue state or two in addition to winning the battlegrounds,” he said. “He has to win almost everything. If he wins all the battlegrounds, he needs one more blue state.”

 According to US media reports, Comey’s FBI probe was renewed after agents seized a laptop used by Clinton’s close aide, Huma Abedin, and her now estranged husband, Anthony Weiner.

The disgraced former congressman, who resigned in 2011 after sending explicit online messages, is under investigation over allegations he sent sexual overtures to a 15-year-old girl.

Clinton campaigned on Monday for a third straight day without Abedin by her side.