Chinese police have opened an investigation into sexual misconduct allegations against one of the country’s best-known Buddhist monks whose case has highlighted the growth of the #MeToo movement in China.

A statement issued by the State Religious Affairs Administration on Thursday said police were investigating claims of sexual assault by Xuecheng. It said he also faces censure from the official government-backed Buddhist Association on suspicion of “violating Buddhist precepts.”

Xuecheng has denied the claims but earlier this month resigned as head of the Buddhist Association.

Thomas Cook has removed all its customers from a hotel in Egypt where one of its employees ‘died of grief’  – hours after her husband was killed by a heart attack on a ‘trip of a lifetime’ holiday.

Susan Cooper, 63, and her husband John Cooper, 69, were on a Thomas Cook holiday at the Steigenberger Aqua Magic hotel in the Red Sea resort town of Hurghada.

Mr Cooper, who ran his own building company in their hometown of Burnley, Lancashire had a heart attack and was rushed to hospital where he died on Tuesday.

Mrs Cooper, a long-serving Thomas Cook employee, died ‘of grief’ just hours later, said Dr Maged Eledawy, the head of Hurghada Hospital.

Thomas Cook said in a statement: ‘We are deeply saddened by the tragic deaths of two of our customers who were staying in the Steigenberger Aqua Magic Hotel in Hurghada, Egypt. The circumstances of their deaths are still unclear. We have also received further reports of a raised level of illness among guests. Safety is always our first priority, so as a precautionary measure we have taken a decision to remove all our customers from this hotel.

‘We will be offering customers alternative hotels within Hurghada, as well as giving them the option to return home. For those customers who choose to come home, we have made arrangements to fly them back tomorrow, 24 August. While we understand this is upsetting for those on holiday, we believe this is the right thing to do.’

We continue to work closely with the hotel and are supporting the authorities with their investigations. The Steigenberger Aqua Magic Hotel was last…

A layer of secrecy shrouds the Chinese government’s clampdown on Muslim ethnic minorities in the region of Xinjiang. Authorities continue to deny the existence of re-education camps there and punish anyone who speaks out publicly about them. Some citizens of Kazakhstan have been detained in the crackdown, and released Kazakhs are one of the only sources of information about what is going on inside the camps.

Since 2016, the government has transformed the region into a dystopian surveillance state with cameras and checkpoints covering the cities, residents tasked with spying on their neighbors, and police throwing Uighur men into re-education camps, where they are brainwashed and tortured. Left-behind wives and mothers don’t know where their husbands and sons are held and whether they are alive.

The international community has done little to call China out on its actions: Isa noted most Muslim countries were reluctant to raise the issue with China because of their dependence on Chinese investments. Western democracies have also remained largely unconcerned, save for a few voices calling for their leaders to press President Xi Jinping on the internment of Uighurs before it escalates into an ethnic cleansing.

BORDERING KAZAKHSTAN AND MONGOLIA, Xinjiang is strategically important to China as it holds a third of the country’s natural gas and oil reserves and is situated on the historic Silk Road, which China aims to revive with its recent Belt and Road Initiative. Yet the 11 million Uighurs living in the area have long bristled at China’s heavy-handed attempts at assimilation,…

During a five-day trip to Beijing this week, the prime minister of Malaysia, Mahathir Mohamad, took a strong stance against further Chinese investment in the Southeast Asian nation, canceling $22 billion worth of China-backed infrastructure projects. Malaysia is the latest country to adopt a cautious view of generous Chinese investments as poor countries fall into China’s debt trap.

“We do not want a situation where there is a new version of colonialism happening because poor countries are unable to compete with rich countries,” the 93-year-old Mahathir said on Monday after meeting with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang.

Mahathir’s predecessor, Najib Razak, led Malaysia into $250 billion worth of debt. Najib had eagerly agreed to projects financed and built by China, including a deep-water port, a renovated harbor, a rail network, and four artificial islands. Mahathir after winning the May elections quickly halted two major Chinese projects in order to start pulling the country out of the red.

Chinese President Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative aims to invest up to $8 trillion in 68 countries to create a network of transportation, energy, and telecommunication infrastructure across Asia, Europe, and Africa. While cash-strapped countries initially cheered the inflow of Chinese cash, some are seeing their infrastructure fall into Chinese hands after they are unable to pay back the loans.

Take, for instance, Sri Lanka. Under the former pro-China President Mahinda Rajapaksa, China provided Sri Lanka hundreds of millions of dollars in loans to build the largely useless…