Hong Kong – Jailed democracy activists Joshua Wong and Nathan Law were released on bail Tuesday pending an appeal against convictions for their role in the 2014 Umbrella Movement protests.

The sentences handed down by the city’s Court of Appeal in August came as fears mount that Beijing is tightening its grip on the semi-autonomous city and that the rule of law is being compromised.

Wong, 21, who became the face of the mass pro-democracy protests while still a teenager, was jailed for six months while Law, 24, was imprisoned for eight months.

They were granted bail at the Court of Final Appeal until November 7, the first appearance in the appeal proceedings.

A third activist, Alex Chow, who was jailed for seven months alongside Law and Wong, was not part of Tuesday’s hearing.

On emerging from the courthouse, a sombre Law said there had been “unpleasant times” in prison and that he was looking forward to a meal with his family.

Law said the result of the appeal case would depend on “the implementation of ‘one country, two systems'”, the semi-autonomous deal that guarantees Hong Kong rights unseen on the mainland.

China stands accused of trampling the arrangement, made when Britain handed back Hong Kong in 1997.

“I hope the result of the case showcases the protection of human rights in our law system,” Law told reporters.

Wong was still completing paperwork in the courthouse by early afternoon.

Supporters outside punched the air at news of the pair’s release.

Lawmaker Eddie Chu said it was “encouraging news for supporters of democracy”.

– ‘Message to society’ – 

The Umbrella trio were found guilty last year on unlawful assembly charges for storming a fenced-off government forecourt known as “Civic Square” as part of a September 2014 protest calling for fully free leadership elections.

Their arrests sparked wider rallies which exploded two days later when police fired tear gas on the crowds, triggering demonstrations that brought parts of Hong Kong to a standstill for more than two months in an unprecedented challenge to Beijing.

Wong and Law initially received community sentences and Chow a three-week suspended sentence at a magistrates’ court over the Civic Square protest.

But Hong Kong’s justice department then sought to increase those terms, with prosecutors arguing they should receive harsher punishment.

The judgement jailing them in August said the court must “send out a clear message to society” that protesters must abide by the law.

Wong’s imprisonment prevented him from running for Hong Kong’s partially directly elected parliament, something he said he had wanted to do. He had been waiting to turn 21 to become eligible to stand.

He celebrated that landmark birthday in jail last month.

Law had already succeeded in becoming a legislator but was among six rebel lawmakers disqualified from parliament after inserting protests into their oaths of office.

Wong and Law each offered cash bail of HK$50,000 (S$8,700) Tuesday. They were required to surrender their passports, not to leave Hong Kong and report to police once a week as part of the terms.

Wong is yet to be sentenced on a separate charge of contempt for obstructing the clearance of a major encampment during the Umbrella Movement rallies.

He has pleaded guilty to that charge.

Other activists previously sentenced on contempt charges have received sentences of up to three months. 

BANGKOK – Sombre crowds began gathering to pay final respects to Thailand’s late King Bhumibol Adulyadej, braving a tropical downpour to camp out along the funeral procession route for a monarch who died last year and was revered by some as a demi-god.

The five-day Buddhist ceremony, which begins on Wednesday, has taken nearly a year to prepare and 3 billion baht ($90 million) has been set aside to pay for the funeral.

Arriving a day early to guarantee their place for a funeral that is expected to draw 250,000 people, mourners pitched flimsy tents in the middle of Bangkok’s old quarter to provide some protection from the torrential rain.

Hotels in the old town neighborhood have been booked up weeks in advance, and a national holiday has been declared for Oct. 26, the day of the cremation.

Although he was a constitutional monarch, King Bhumibol Adulyadej has been credited with reviving the prestige of the monarchy.

Aged 88 when he died, the king was viewed by many people a pillar of stability in the politically turbulent Southeast Asian country, where a military junta currently holds power.

The king’s cremation site, which features gold-tipped pavilions built for the occasion, is a stone’s throw from the Grand Palace, popular with foreign tourists.

Even though the funeral had yet to begin, many of the people gathering had tears in their eyes and were visibly emotional. Hunched beneath a makeshift tent made of cloth and string, Chalermporn Paebutr, a 72-year-old woman from northern Thailand, described her determination to bid farewell to a much-loved monarch.

“I travelled here two days ago so that I could be the first to get a good spot,” she told Reuters.

“We only have to brave the rain for a few days. This is worth it if we can be near him one last time.” Around 1,000 people had camped overnight in the downpour, police said on Tuesday. Some only had their plastic raincoats for protection.

Thailand has suffered floods since Oct. 10. Nine people have died, and 19 of the country’s 77 provinces have been hit affected.

“The floods will not affect the cremation ceremony in any way,” interior minister Anupong Paochinda told reporters.

New King Maha Vajiralongkorn, the late king’s only son, will lead the cremation ceremony.

Thailand has a harsh law, known as Article 112, against insulting the monarchy, and prosecutions have skyrocketed since the junta came to power following a coup in 2014.

The United Nations has voiced concern over the use of the law to clamp down on free speech and has repeatedly called on Thailand to amend it. 

KUALA LUMPUR – Handcuffed, wearing bulletproof vests and under heavily armed guard, the two women accused of murdering the half-brother of North Korea’s leader were pushed around a Malaysian airport in wheelchairs on Tuesday during a court visit to the crime scene.

Indonesian Siti Aisyah, 25, and Doan Thi Huong, 28, a Vietnamese, are charged with murdering Kim Jong Nam by smearing his face with VX, a chemical nerve agent, at Kuala Lumpur’s budget international terminal on Feb. 13.

The two women were brought back to the scene as part of an entourage of court officials, led by trial judge Azmi Ariffin and accompanied by over 100 police officers and dozens of journalists, on a visit to retrace the events that unfolded before, during and after the murder.

The site visit covered various locations in the terminal where the two women were seen on closed-circuit television videos that were shown in court earlier this month.

These include a restuarant where Siti Aisyah was seen meeting an unidentified man, the toilets where police witnesses said both women had gone to after the attack on Kim Jong Nam, the clinic where the victim sought medical aid and the taxi stands where both suspects were seen at after the attack.

Huong appeared unwell midway through the site visit while Siti Aisyah broke down in tears. Both women were then provided wheelchairs.

Recordings on Feb. 13 show Huong approaching Kim and grasping his face from behind near the airport’s check-in counters before quickly leaving. Siti Aisyah could not be seen during the attack but was identified by a police witness as a figure running in another direction.

The videos also show the women heading to separate bathrooms to wash their hands.

Both women were seen meeting with two men, identified only as Mr. Chang and Mr. Y, before the attack. According to police, the men had applied liquid on the women’s hands, and were among four suspects-at-large charged together with the women for the murder.

‘CLOSELY-WATCHED TRIAL’

The airport visit comes as the high-profile trial entered its third week. Twelve witnesses have testified so far.

Forensic and chemical weapons experts said Kim Jong Nam had died of nerve agent poisoning, and that VX had been found on Siti Aisyah and Huong’s clothes. Traces of the poison were also found under Huong’s fingernails.

Prosecutors say Siti Aisyah and Huong conspired with four others who are still at large to kill Kim Jong Nam.

Defence lawyers have argued the women did not know that they were handling poison and that they thought they had been involved in a prank for a reality TV show.

South Korean and US officials have said that Kim Jong Un’s regime was behind the murder.

Kim Jong Nam, who was living in exile in Macau, had criticised his family’s dynastic rule of North Korea and his brother had ordered his execution, according to some South Korean lawmakers.

Suvarnabhumi Airport will use large screens to display live broadcasts of the Royal Cremation ceremonies for His Majesty the late King Bhumibol Adulyadej this week.

The Royal Cremation ceremony will take place from October 25-29 and will be televised live by the Thailand Television Pool. Suvarnabhumi Airport’s website said its screens would show the broadcast to allow passengers to witness this memorable and significant event in the lives of all Thais.

It would also be an opportunity to show the ancient traditions of the Royal Cremation to foreign visitors. The screens will be located in the departure hall at gates number 2, 3, 5, 7 and 8 as well as on televisions in every gate holding area.

A big screen behind Row D of the check-in counter will also display the ceremony. Screens will also be placed in the arrival hall on the second floor at Exit A and at the passenger waiting area at gate 10.

A screen will also be provided at gate 8 on the ground floor, where free shuttle buses will transport passengers to and from the airport to nearby ceremonial venues during the ceremonies.

Three waterspouts have been spotted in the waters off Thousand Islands regency on Monday morning, a phenomenon rarely seen in the tropics, the National Mitigation Agency has said.

“This is a rare occurrence whereby three waterspouts are seen next to each other, particularly in a tropical country. It shows that climate change is real thanks to environmental destruction,” the agency’s head, Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, said on Monday.

The waterspouts appeared next to Opak Island, an uninhabited isle situated close to Kaliage Island. A waterspout is an intense vortex (usually appearing as a funnel-shaped cloud) that occurs over a body of water.

Waterspouts increase during a transition period from dry to wet season, locally known as pancaroba, which is triggered by the contrasting temperature at the surface of the land, water and atmosphere that leads to air pressure and creates the waterspout, Sutopo said.

No casualties have been reported, but the Jakarta Disaster Mitigation Agency has intensified communications with related units to monitor latest updates, he added.

He told residents to remain vigilant in the face of extreme weather during the pancaroba period, in which strong winds and tornados frequently occur.

“Avoid activities under big trees and billboards because they may potentially collapse due to strong winds,” Sutopo said.

The Seoul Metropolitan Government on Monday unveiled a 1.3 trillion won (S$1.5 billion) project to build a mammoth underground public transit terminal in Gangnam by 2023 to alleviate road traffic in Seoul’s most congested area.

Spanning 160,000 square meters of space across six basement floors, the Yeongdong-daero transit terminal is to be the single largest multifunctional underground complex to be built in the country, the city government said.

“A global consortium led by French architect Dominique Perrault has been selected for the complex’s design,” the Seoul Metropolitan Government announced Monday. Perrault is an architect known here for his work at Ewha Womans University — the Ewha Campus Complex building.

Perrault’s “Light Walk” project was selected for its “compatibility to nearby districts and ability to digest massive traffic,” city officials explained.

Construction is to begin in 2019 and end in 2023.

Located between Samsung Station on Subway Line No. 2 and Bongeunsa Station on Line No. 9, the underground complex is envisioned to be a multifunctional, cultural and retail space while serving as a major transport hub in the southern part of the capital.

On the upper two levels of the complex, there will be an exhibition hall, a museum, a library and a shopping mall. The levels from the third underground floor down will be used as bus, subway, train transit and transfer centres and parking lots for tour buses.

The complex will connect Subway Lines No. 2 and 9 with a direct transfer passageway, and offer a junction of five train lines including the high-speed KTX and bus stops.

The city expects at least 600,000 transit passengers will visit the underground terminal every day, nearly double the number at Seoul Station. Over 180,000 people are expected to take buses here, following the 2023 opening of a bus-only lane in the area.

Yeongdong-daero’s 480-meter sector of road will go underground and the surface area will be created into a 30,000-square-meter public plaza, which is double the size of Seoul Square in front of the City Hall building in Jung-gu.

On the surface area between the Coex shopping mall and Hyundai’s proposed new headquarters, Seoul will create an urban park-themed plaza, touted as a rival to New York’s Central Park and London’s Hyde Park.

Solar-powered lamps will be installed by the 560 meter-long boulevard surrounding the plaza and light will come in all day through a specially designed skylight, all the way down to the underground floors.

Seoul City also plans to use this spot as the Korean version of Time Square, as a zone outside Coex was allowed by the Interior Ministry last year for the first time to freely install outdoor digital screens and billboards without any restrictions on types or sizes. The size, type and location of outdoor ads had been strictly restricted prior.

“We will continue to develop this area and complete the underground complex construction successfully so many citizens can visit and commute easily,” said Chung Su-yong, head of the Seoul City’s urban space development bureau.