A Hong Kong policeman of Pakistani descent left netizens awed by his heroism and Cantonese prowess, not to mention dashing good looks, after the 20-year-old helped talk a man out of committing suicide.

Law enforcer Ifzal Zaffar was called to the scene at the Western Harbour Tunnel construction site on Sunday morning where a suicidal Pakistani man had climbed up a crane, Coconuts Hong Kong reported.

Using their common language of Urdu, Ifzal managed to convince the man, named Anan, to retreat from his position. Anan was eventually taken to hospital.

According to Apple Daily Hong Kong, Ifzal is an ethnic Pakistani who was born and bred in Hong Kong, which explains his fluent and effortless Cantonese.

Read also: Young blue-eyed Pakistani tea-seller becomes social media sensation in Pakistan and India

Not convinced? Just take a listen to this interview posted by the Hong Kong police force:

Said Ifzal: “I used the techniques we learned at the academy… I think he felt safer knowing that I could talk to him in his own language.”

Ifzal, whose father is a traditional dressmaker, said his childhood ambition was to be a policeman. He’s a graduate of the Hong Kong police academy’s Project Gemstone programme, which provides language classes to non-Chinese members of the force.

Ifzal pointed out that their native language skills can help many Pakistanis and other Asian minorities living in Hong Kong, who might otherwise shun the police due to the language barrier.

Besides commending him on a job well done, netizens have expressed amazement at his Cantonese language ability.

And as expected, a great deal of online attention has also been focused on his good looks.

When asked by Apple Daily if he was on the look out for a potential girlfriend, the shy police officer demurred: “I think work is more important at the moment.”

So the next time you’re around Hong Kong’s Yau Tsim Disctrict (comprising the Yau Ma Tei and Tsim Sha Tsui area) where Ifzal is based, you’ll know to look out for this young and single law enforcer and give him – no, not your number, but a well-deserved pat on the back.

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candicec@sph.com.sg

A South Korean animal rights group has filed a complaint with police against former president Park Geun-hye for abandoning nine pet dogs in the presidential Blue House after being dismissed from office.

The dogs are Jindos, a Korean breed of hunting dog known for their loyalty.

Read also: Korea prosecutors to summon ex-president Park for questioning

Park left the Blue House presidential complex on Sunday, two days after the Constitutional Court dismissed her from office over a corruption scandal involving big business and financial favours.

She returned to her private home in the upmarket Gangnam district of the capital, Seoul.

Some neighbours there had given Park a pair of Jindos in early 2013, when she left for the Blue House. The pair had seven puppies in January this year.

Read also: Ousted South Korea leader slammed for defiance

The Busan Korea Alliance for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals said on its Twitter account it had filed a complaint against Park on a charge of animal abandonment.

The Blue House confirmed that Park had left the dogs there but denied they had been abandoned. “She told Blue House staff to take good care of the dogs and to find good foster homes for the puppies if necessary,” said a Blue House spokesman, Kim Dong-jo.

Another animal rights group, Coexistence of Animal Rights on Earth, said it was willing to care for the animals and find them homes. “We want to help these dogs so that they won’t be adopted thoughtlessly or end up in dog shelters,” the group said in a statement.

The Jindos are native to Jindo Island off the southwest coast of the Korean peninsula.

When the Costa Serena cruise ship steamed into the South Korean tourist island of Jeju, Bai Liyun stayed on board, where crew had organised a magic show, games and even a wine-tasting.

She was not alone.

Most of her Chinese shipmates, estimated by passengers to number more than 3,000, followed suit, in a show of solidarity with their government’s vociferous opposition to South Korea’s decision to deploy a controversial missile defence system.

“We spent the whole day on the cruise ship. I felt very happy,” Bai, from China’s western province of Gansu, said on Tuesday in Shanghai, where the passengers disembarked on their return.

“As Chinese, we surely should answer the government’s call at a special time, which meant not going to Jeju Island.” But the decision meant tour guides and about 80 tour buses were left waiting at the port, South Korean media reported.

Read also: S.Korea’s favourite for president demands China stop retaliation over THAAD

China has publicly opposed the deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) missile system, calling its powerful radar a threat to the country’s security.

However, South Korea and the United States say the system is aimed solely at defending the South against a growing North Korean missile threat.

Nevertheless, Beijing has stepped up pressure on companies doing business with, and in, South Korea, although it has not directly said it was targeting South Korean firms in retaliation.

Read also: Could Taiwan be up next in THAAD trouble?

The stakes are high for South Korea, and tourism is a particularly vulnerable sector. South Korean data show almost half of its visitors come from China.

Last week, airlines such as China Eastern Airlines Corp Ltd and Spring Airlines Co Ltd stopped website offers of flights between China’s eastern city of Ningbo and Jeju.

The decision to boycott Jeju “was made on mutual consensus”among the cruise passengers, most of whom were employees of the Chinese direct-sales company Resgreen Group on a junket, said a company spokeswoman, Jiang Wen.

The company would soon issue a statement, another spokeswoman added.

Read also: Xinhua warns S.Korea’s Lotte over THAAD

Bai, a Resgreen employee, said colleagues had sent round messages before the trip to suggest that nobody set foot in South Korea. The

company made the decision official before the cruise docked at Jeju, she said.

While South Korean exports from mascara to music have grown wildly popular in China, the port boycott shows that patriotism, deftly stoked by the ruling Communist Party, can quickly be brought to bear in diplomatic tiffs.

Bai’s cruise partner and relative, Bai Lijuan, said the decision was the right one. “(THAAD) is a threat to Chinese,” she said. “We must be resolutely opposed.” A passenger from southern Hunan province who stepped off the boat in Shanghai said passengers had been told not to disembark in Jeju, but he was ambivalent about the missed South Korean port call. “The trip was all about shopping. No sightseeing, just shopping. That’s a lot of spending,” said the passenger, in his early twenties, who did not give his name. “At least I didn’t need to spend anything in Jeju.”

BEIJING – China confirmed a bird flu outbreak, the country’s sixth case since last October, at a duck farm in central Hubei province, according to a Ministry of Agriculture statement on Tuesday.

The outbreak in Daye, a city of more than 900,000 people, was confirmed as a case of the H5N6 strain of the virus, the ministry said in the statement on its website.

The local government culled 681 birds after the outbreak, which infected 134 ducks and killed 86 in a local farm, the statement said.

The outbreak is now under control, the ministry said.

The last bird flu outbreak in January killed 1,054 birds at a goose farm in central Hunan province.

China has culled more than 175,000 birds since October as South Korea and other neighbouring countries battled their own major outbreaks.

Additionally, the H7N9 strain of the virus has caused 161 deaths in China since October. China reported 61 fatalities and 160 cases of human infection from H7N9 bird flu in February, the government said on Monday.

Live poultry markets have been shut down in many provinces following human infections, curtailing the poultry industry.

Chinese chicken prices sank to their lowest level in more than a decade in February as fears about the spread of bird flu increased, hurting meat producers’ share prices and deepening concerns about demand in the world’s second-largest poultry consumer.

The last major bird flu outbreak in 2013 caused more than $6 billion in losses for the agricultural sector.

BEIJING – China said on Tuesday it was waiting for an official word on why Japan plans to send its largest warship on a three-month tour through the South China Sea, but that it hopes Japan can be responsible.

China claims almost all the disputed waters and its growing military resence has fuelled concern in Japan and the West, with the United States holding regular air and naval patrols to ensure freedom of navigation.

The Izumo helicopter carrier, commissioned only two years ago, will make stops in Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines and Sri Lanka before joining the Malabar joint naval exercise with Indian and US naval vessels in the Indian Ocean in July, sources told Reuters.

Read Also: Japan plans to send largest warship to South China Sea, sources say

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said she did not know if the ship was going to visit countries in Southeast Asia or if there was another aim.

“We have not yet heard what Japan says officially,” she told a daily news briefing.

“If it’s only a normal visit, going to several countries, and passing normally through the South China Sea, then we’ve got no objections, and we hope this kind of normal exchange between relevant countries can play a role promoting regional peace and stability,” Hua said.

“But if going to the South China Sea has different intentions, then that’s a different matter,” she added.

Read Also: China says first draft of South China Sea code of conduct is ready

Japan had been stirring up trouble on the South China Sea issue of late, and China hoped it can play a constructive role in peace and stability, Hua said.

Taiwan, Malaysia, Vietnam, the Philippines and Brunei also claim parts of the sea which has rich fishing grounds, oil and gas deposits and through which around $5 trillion of global sea-borne trade passes each year.

Japan does not have any claim to the waters, but has a separate maritime dispute with China in the East China Sea.

A self-confessed assassin who testified to being in a “death squad” under Philippine leader Rodrigo Duterte will soon file a case at the International Criminal Court accusing the resident of crimes against humanity, his lawyer said on Tuesday.

More than 8,000 people have died since Duterte took office in June and unleashed a bloody war on drugs, a third in raids and sting operations by police who say they acted in self-defence.

Duterte and the police have denied links to the other killings, many of which rights groups say bear the same hallmarks as hundreds of suspicious deaths of criminals in Davao City during the 22 years Duterte was its mayor.

Read also: Duterte confirms existence of Davao Death Squad during martial law years

Two men have testified before the Senate saying they were part of an Legislators found no proof of their testimony, which the president’s The ICC case will come from Edgar Matobato, who came out of hiding last week and testified in September to have killed more than 50 people in the Davao area.

In a television interview, his lawyer, Jude Sabio, said Matobato would file a case with the court in The Hague this month or in early April.

“Murder is a serious crime. If it is committed as part of a widespread constitutes a crime against humanity,” Sabio said.

Retired policeman Arturo Lascanas has testified to killing alongside Matobato and last week said he believed more witnesses would speak Duterte’s chief lawyer, Salvador Panelo, said the president was not threatened by any possible international court case. “The extrajudicial killings here are being done by the members of the (drug) syndicate themselves,” Panelo told news channel ANC.

“The president is not behind it, neither (are) the police.” In a report last month, Amnesty International said the drug killings appeared to be “systematic, planned and organised” by authorities and could constitute crimes against humanity.

In a series of reports last year, Reuters showed police had a 97 percent kill rate in drug operations, the strongest proof yet that police were summarily shooting suspects.

Read also: Duterte wants plunder, rape next on death penalty

An ICC prosecutor in October said the tribunal might have jurisdiction to prosecute those accused of the killings.

Duterte has little love for the ICC and has described it as”useless”.

Asked on Monday about the prospect of going to jail, Duterte stood by what he said were clear instructions to police to kill if their lives were in danger, and reiterated that he took full responsibility for the crackdown. “I will do what I say in public and I am ready to face the consequences,” he told a news conference. “If I go to prison, so be it.”