A special court in South Sudan has ruled that it does have the jurisdiction to prosecute suspended Vice-President Riek Machar and seven co-accused, who are charged with murder, treason and crimes against humanity.

The court dismissed all objections by Machar’s legal team regarding its authority, the constitutionality of the proceedings, and the claim that he was immune from prosecution. The case will continue on Wednesday.

Machar has dismissed the charges brought against him two weeks ago as a political “witch-hunt”. They have raised fears of return to civil war.

The charges stem from an attack in March by a militia allegedly linked to Machar, which killed 250 soldiers and a general.

Since then, he has been under house arrest.

Machar’s defence team had argued that the alleged crimes should not be tried by a national court but by a hybrid court under the African Union, in accordance with the 2018 Peace Agreement that ended the five-year civil war between his forces and those loyal to President Salva Kiir.

The court however argued that it had the authority to try national offences, as a hybrid court had not yet been established.

“The special court enjoys jurisdiction to try this case according to the Transitional Constitution 2011 as amended,” Presiding Judge James Alala ruled.

It also dismissed the argument by Machar’s team that he had immunity from prosecution, adding that the provision only applied to the president.

“The First Vice-President does not have constitutional immunity, according to the transitional constitution,” the judge ruled.

The court also expelled two of Machar’s lawyers after the prosecution argued that they did not have valid licences.

The presiding judge ruled that the two could only participate once they have renewed their licences.

Machar’s lead lawyer Geri Raimondo Legge Lubati told the court that his client and the co-accused had been “subjected to politicised media campaign” by ministers and other senior officials.

“To the public, this conduct amounts to unlawful and prior conviction of our accused and a blatant violation of the constitutional guarantee of presumption of innocence… The accused is innocent until proved beyond reasonable doubt,” he said.

The charges have sparked fears of renewed conflict in the country, with the UN, African Union and neighbouring countries all calling for calm in the world’s newest country, which only gained independence from Sudan in 2011 following decades of war.

China is transforming parts of its east coast into a platform for potential missile strikes against Taiwan and the nearby seas. The buildup is a vital part of the Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s ambitions to bring Taiwan under Beijing’s control and counter U.S. power in Asia through the threat of overwhelming force.

The Pentagon estimates that China’s Rocket Force, which controls nuclear and conventional missiles, has increased its stockpile by almost 50 percent in four years, to about 3,500 missiles. While it is unclear how many are on the east coast and targeting Taiwan, satellite images show that missile brigades have built new and bigger bases and added more launchpads in recent years.

And the bases are deploying increasingly advanced missiles like the Dongfeng-17, a hypersonic missile that is maneuverable and harder to intercept, and the Dongfeng-26, nicknamed the “Guam Express” by some Chinese for what researchers say is its ability to strike U.S. military bases in the region.

Along China’s eastern seaboard, soldiers have been practicing launching missiles from farm fields and secluded valleys, near expressways and from coastal outcrops facing Taiwan, which lies across a 100-mile strait.

Missiles are “really the starting point for any type of military coercion campaign that China would use against Taiwan,” said Jennifer Kavanagh, a senior fellow at Defense Priorities, a research group in Washington. “For the Chinese, I think, having an overwhelming number of missiles is also intended as a political signal — to Taiwan that there’s no point in fighting back, to the United States that you can’t intervene.”

In a war, China’s missiles would be critical for knocking out Taiwan’s defenses as well as threatening U.S. bases in Guam and Japan and targeting U.S. Navy ships sent to Taiwan’s aid. In peacetime, China uses missile tests, exercises and displays to project strength and to attempt to intimidate Taiwan and its partners.

The latest show of force was a military parade in Beijing in early September, when China revealed an array of new missiles. The parade featured new anti-ship missiles that appear to have hypersonic capabilities, as well as intercontinental nuclear missiles.

“The Rocket Force is the crown jewel of the Chinese military,” said Thomas Shugart, a former U.S. naval officer now at the Center for a New American Security. “It increases, by a huge degree, the range at which China can reach out suddenly with very little warning.”

Corruption scandals and leadership upheavals have recently blighted the Rocket Force. But Mr. Xi signaled his commitment to in the force last year, when he visited Brigade 611 in Anhui Province in eastern China, the region where the People’s Liberation Army concentrates its forces on Taiwan and the western Pacific. Chinese state television showed him watching as troops simulated preparing mobile missiles for launch. He urged them to “deepen your sense of peril and crisis, and your combat mind-set.”

A Growing Hub for Missile Training and Launches

Satellite images show that the base for Brigade 611 has doubled in area in recent years. The new area includes what some experts said might be, at least in part, a training complex with launchpads and dummy tunnels for simulating operations.

“It’s a huge facility, a pretty cohesive training facility for practicing basically a full range of operations,” said Decker Eveleth, a researcher at CNA, a research organization, who has closely studied China’s missile forces and who examined the images of Brigade 611 at the request of The New York Times.

The base expansion features what appear to be three dozen missile launchpads, an unusually dense cluster since launchpads are normally dispersed away from bases to avoid detection, said David C. Logan, an assistant professor at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University who studies China’s nuclear and missile forces.

Another unit, Brigade 616, in Jiangxi Province south of Brigade 611, has also grown rapidly. Satellite images from 2020 show that even at the height of the pandemic, China was clearing and leveling farmland, and after only 18 months, the construction of a new site was nearly complete.

New Generation of Missiles

Brigade 616 is now being prepared for the Dongfeng-17, according to Mr. Eveleth and other experts. Such missiles are capable of traveling at least five times the speed of sound and can maneuver to evade defenses. Mr. Eveleth noted details in the satellite images — such as the height of a storage bay — that suggested it would be used to hold the new missile.

The unit that Mr. Xi visited, Brigade 611 in Anhui, is now deploying the Dongfeng-26, which can be armed with a conventional or nuclear warhead and, as implied by the “Guam Express” nickname, is able to reach American military installations in parts of the Asia-Pacific. The missile can be transported by road, making it harder for enemies to track and destroy. (Hans M. Kristensen and other researchers from the Federation of American Scientists had first reported the expansion of the brigade in March.)

The Pentagon estimates that the Rocket Force has about 500 Dongfeng-26 missiles.

In a war, should Chinese leaders decide to send nuclear warheads to some Dongfeng-26 units, U.S. satellites might be able to detect them being moved from a depot in central China, Mr. Eveleth said. But such tracking may not be foolproof, leaving uncertainty about which units had nuclear warheads close at hand, he and other experts said.

That uncertainty could heighten the dangers of escalation and perhaps miscalculation.

“If there is a Taiwan conflict, particularly if there’s some level of U.S. involvement or the threat of U.S. involvement, then from the start it has a nuclear dimension,” said Kelly Grieco, a senior fellow with the Stimson Center who coauthored a recent study warning that U.S. bases in the Asia-Pacific could be decimated by China’s missiles. “A system like the Dongfeng-26 makes this potentially even more dangerous.”

In a war over Taiwan, Chinese commanders would scatter mobile missile units to caves and protected sites to try to evade detection, Chinese military textbooks and videos of exercises indicate. The launch sites along the coast would allow units to fire rockets at targets in Taiwan or at ships at sea, and then shift to another site.

One of these launch sites is near China’s closest point to Taiwan. During military exercises in 2022 — which Beijing said were in retaliation for a visit to Taipei by the then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi — that area was used to test fire army rockets able to hit Taiwan, according to Joseph Wen, an independent Taiwanese researcher who tracks the People’s Liberation Army forces. Mr. Wen studied footage from Chinese state television about the exercises to determine the site that was used.

China’s military has also built targets in the shape of U.S. warships in the country’s western deserts, apparently for missile practice, including dummy warships mounted on rails to simulate movement at sea. In a war, U.S. and other forces may try to destroy Chinese missile and long-range artillery units, though striking at targets on the Chinese mainland could be a risky escalation.

Chinese planners appear to be wagering that their missile numbers and mobility can prevail in a game of hide-and-seek, evading strikes and exhausting the enemy’s missile defenses. Recent studies say U.S. air bases in Asia could be highly vulnerable to Chinese missiles, partly because the bases lack enough hardened shelters for planes.

“We’re working on defenses,” said Mr. Shugart, a co-author of one of the studies, “but I have a hard time imagining them not getting overwhelmed with the kind of numbers that we see,” he said, referring to China’s missile forces.

Still, China’s rapid buildup of its missile systems has not been without problems. A Pentagon assessment suggested that graft in the Rocket Force may have compromised China’s new nuclear missile silos.

And while China’s radars and satellites have improved missile accuracy, some experts question how its missiles will perform in real conditions. Striking at ships across the sea in the chaos of war, for instance, would be much harder than hitting fixed targets, Professor Logan of Tufts University said.

Indian leader controversially refers to the politically-charged win as an extension of ‘Operation Sindoor’.

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi has contentiously invoked the conflict with Pakistan in May, which brought the nuclear-armed neighbours to the cusp of a fifth all-out war, to celebrate India’s Asia Cup final cricket win against their regional arch foes.

“#OperationSindoor on the games field. Outcome is the same – India wins! Congrats to our cricketers,” Modi posted on X on Monday.

Modi was referring to the four-day conflict between the two nations, with its focus on Indian-administered Kashmir, in May, following an attack that killed 22 tourists that India blamed on Pakistan, an accusation that Islamabad vehemently denies.

During the conflict, Modi announced “Operation Sindoor” as a response to the attack, which heightened tensions and led to retaliation from Pakistan. The short conflict killed more than 70 people in missile and drone attacks, with both sides claiming victory.

In June, an Indian naval officer conceded that the country lost several fighter jets to Pakistani fire during their conflict in May and said the losses were a result of “constraints” placed on Indian forces by the government in New Delhi.

India and Pakistan traded other slights after Indian cricket players refused to shake hands with their Pakistani counterparts in the final of the Asia Cup, as tensions between the two countries remain heavily strained.

After India beat Pakistan at the Dubai International Cricket Stadium on Sunday by five wickets, the Indian team refused to accept the trophy from Asia Cricket Council (ACC) chief Mohsin Naqvi, who is also the chief of Pakistan’s Cricket Board (PCB) and Pakistan’s interior minister.

Simon Doull, a former New Zealand cricketer and broadcaster, announced, citing the ACC, that the Indian team would not be collecting their awards due to the tensions.

During the course of the tournament, the Indian team refused to shake hands with the Pakistan team in any of the three matches the two sides played.

Naqvi reportedly refused to step down from the presentation ceremony to hand out the award altogether.

Indian players Tilak Varma, who won the player-of-the-match award, Abhishek Sharma, who won the player-of-the-tournament award, and Kuldeep Yadav, who won the Most Valuable Player award, turned up to accept their individual awards but did not acknowledge Naqvi.

The Pakistani official was also the only person on stage who did not applaud the Indian trio.

In a post-match conference, Yadav said he had “never seen” a winning team denied their trophy.

But Pakistan’s captain, Salman Agha, accused India’s behaviour during the tournament of being “bad for cricket”.

“What they did today, a good team doesn’t do that. Good teams do what we have done. We waited for our medals and took them,” Agha said.

Indian cricket board (BCCI) secretary Devajit Saikia announced that the board will lodge a protest against Naqvi in the next meeting of the governing International Cricket Council (ICC) in November.

Indian captain Yadav was accused of making a political statement after the first match, while Pakistan opener Sahibzada Farhan and pacer Haris Rauf made political gestures in the second.

A pro-democracy campaigner who fled Hong Kong has been denied entry to Singapore despite being granted a visa, with the city-state saying his presence “would not be in its national interests”.

Nathan Law, who lives in exile in the UK, said he arrived in Singapore on Saturday to attend a “closed-door, invitation-only” conference but was detained at the border for hours before he was deported.

“I was not asked questions and they did not give reason for the denial,” he told the BBC.

Mr Law, who also previously served as a local legislator in Hong Kong, is one of eight exiled activists who is wanted by the city’s authorities, who have accused him of endangering national security.

Singapore has an extradition treaty with Hong Kong.

“Mr Law’s entry into and presence in the country would not be in Singapore’s national interests,” said the ministry’s spokesman in response to queries from the BBC.

“A visa holder is still subject to further checks at point of entry into the country. That is what happened with Nathan Law,” said the spokesman, adding that Mr Law was referred for “questioning, and immigration and security assessment” after he landed.

The government had previously said it “takes a clear and strong stand against the importation of politics of other countries into Singapore”.

In a statement, Mr Law said he believes the denial of entry was for “political” reasons. “I am unsure whether external forces, such as the PRC (People’s Republic of China), are involved, directly or indirectly,” he said.

Mr Law said he applied for a visa that would have allowed him a “one-time entry for a few days”, and that it was approved three weeks before his departure. He said he holds a UK Refugee Travel Document.

On Sunday, the activist was put on the earliest flight back to San Francisco, where he initially departed from.

The organisers of the event he was due to attend have declined to comment to the BBC.

The BBC has also reached out to the Hong Kong and British authorities for comment.

During its routine press briefing on Monday, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson said “each country has the right to manage entry and exit on its own.”

He also described Mr Law as “an anti-China, anti-Hong Kong troublemaker who has been lawfully placed on the wanted list by the Hong Kong police”.

Mr Law, a former Hong Kong legislator, is one of the most prominent figures in the city’s pro-democracy movement, fled the city in 2020 after China imposed a sweeping national security law which targets secession, subversion and terrorism with punishments of up to life in prison.

In 2021, he was granted asylum in the UK.

Hong Kong authorities have offered rewards of HK$1m ($128,000; £95,000) for information that can help them arrest Mr Law and other pro-democracy activists.

This is not the first incident Singapore authorities have taken action regarding Hong Kong pro-democracy activists.

In 2019, the city-state fined a Singaporean activist for holding an online forum several years prior that featured prominent activist Joshua Wong speaking in a teleconference call.