Hong Kong bans doxing of police, kin
HONG KONG -- Hong Kong authorities won a temporary court order banning anyone from posting personal details or photos of police officers online, in their latest effort to clamp down on the city's protest movement.
The government said Saturday that the High Court granted the Department of Justice's request for the interim injunction to "restrain doxing and harassment of police officers and their families."
The wide-ranging order prohibits unlawfully "publishing, communicating or disclosing" officers' details including their Facebook and Instagram account IDs or photos of officers or their family members.
The order, in effect until Nov. 8, also prohibits "intimidating, molesting, harassing, threatening, pestering or interfering" with police officers or their relatives.
Protesters ignored the order and continued to post photos and details of officers on an online forum. Supporters of the semi-autonomous Chinese territory's protest movement have also had their details posted on a website.
Japan toll still rising from floods, slides
TOKYO -- Torrential rain that caused flooding and mudslides in towns east of Tokyo left at least 10 people dead and added fresh damage in areas still recovering from recent typhoons, officials said Saturday.
Rescue workers found the body of a person who had disappeared in Chiba prefecture after getting caught up in floodwaters while driving. Another person was unaccounted for in Fukushima, farther north, which is still reeling from damage by Typhoon Hagibis earlier this month.
The death toll from the flooding included nine people in Chiba and one in Fukushima.
While rains and floodwaters subsided, parts of Chiba were still inundated. About 4,700 homes were out of running water and some train services were delayed or suspended.
In Midori district in Chiba, mudslides crushed three houses, killing three people who were buried underneath them. Another mudslide hit a house in nearby Ichihara city, killing a woman. In Nagara and Chonan towns, four people drowned when their vehicles were submerged.
In Fukushima, a woman was found dead in a park in Soma city after a report that a car was washed away. A passenger was still missing.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe held an emergency task force meeting Saturday morning and called for "the utmost effort in rescue and relief operations." He also urged quick repairs of electricity, water and other essential services to help restore the lives of the disaster-hit residents.
Catalan groups protest against arrests
BARCELONA, Spain -- Hundreds of thousands in Spain's restive region of Catalonia protested Saturday in Barcelona against the imprisonment of nine separatist leaders for their roles in an illegal 2017 secession bid.
Barcelona's police say 350,000 people rallied in downtown Barcelona, many waving pro-independence flags for Catalonia. The rally was organized by the main pro-secession grassroots groups who want to create a new state in wealthy northeastern Spain.
"We cannot accept that [the prisoners] have been condemned to terms of nine to 13 years for defending the self-determination of Catalans," the president of the pro-secession grassroots group ANC, Elisenda Paluzie, said.
Nine Catalan officials were given sentences of nine to 13 years for sedition by the Supreme Court. Four of those were also convicted of misuse of public funds. They were all acquitted of the more serious crime of rebellion, which carries sentences of up to 25 years.
The Oct. 14 sentence sparked peaceful protests in Barcelona and other nearby cities that later spiraled into violent clashes with police during six straight days.
Bishops request married men be priests
VATICAN CITY -- Catholic bishops from across the Amazon called Saturday for the ordination of married men as priests to address the clergy shortage in the region, a historic proposal that would upend centuries of Roman Catholic tradition.
The majority of 180 bishops from nine Amazonian countries also called for the Vatican to reopen a debate on ordaining women as deacons, saying "it is urgent for the church in the Amazon to promote and confer ministries for men and women in an equitable manner."
The proposals were contained in a final document approved Saturday at the end of a three-week synod on the Amazon, which Pope Francis called in 2017 to focus attention on saving the rain forest and better ministering to its indigenous people.
The Catholic Church, which contains nearly two dozen different rites, already allows married priests in Eastern Rite churches and in cases where married Anglican priests have converted. But if Francis accepts the proposal, it would mark a first for the Latin Rite church in a millennium.
Francis told the bishops at the end of the voting that he would indeed reopen the work of a 2016 commission that studied the issue of women deacons. He said he planned to take the bishops' overall recommendations and prepare a document of his own before the end of the year.
-- Compiled by Democrat-Gazette staff from wire reports.
A Section on 10/27/2019