This is People’s Daily Tonight, your news source from China. 

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HKSAR chief executive condemns violence at Legislative Council building

Hong Kong SAR chief executive Carrie Lam condemned Monday's violence by some protesters who stormed the Legislative Council building.

She said she hopes Hong Kong society will return to normal as soon as possible.

Protesters used a roll cage trolley as a ram and iron poles to shatter the glass doors of the LegCo building.

She added that the rule of law will continue to guide the government's reactions and responses to social issues and to the demands and aspirations of our people. (CGTN)

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Over 2.84 mln pigs in Vietnam culled amid African swine fever spread

African swine fever (ASF) has stricken 61 localities across Vietnam, leading to the culling of over 2.84 million pigs or 10.3 percent of the country's total pig population, Vietnam News Agency reported on Tuesday.

Southern Tra Vinh province has become the latest Vietnamese locality hit by ASF, the provincial authorities said, noting that a herd of 54 pigs raised by a household in Giong Trom district was affected by the animal disease.

Vietnam will focus on developing cattle, poultry and aquatic breeding to compensate for a shortage of pork which is expected to hit the country this year due to ASF, its Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development said late last month. (Xinhua)

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US proposes tariffs on EU cheese, pork and whiskey

The US has proposed $4 billion in tariffs on a range of European Union products -- including parmesan cheese and Scotch and Irish whiskey -- over subsidies for commercial aircraft.

The list also includes sausages, hams, pasta and olives. 

For more than 14 years, Washington and Brussels have accused each other of unfairly subsidizing aviation giants Boeing and Airbus, in a tit-for-tat dispute that long predates US President Donald Trump's time in office. (AFP)

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Chinese warship arrives in France for 5-day visit

Chinese missile destroyer Xi’an sailed into a port in Toulon, France on Monday for a five-day visit.

The missile destroyer, a warship participating in the ongoing 32nd Chinese naval escort fleet, was greeted by Chinese diplomats and representatives of Chinese businesses in France. 

Toulon hosts the second largest military port of the French navy. Sailors aboard Xi’an will visit their French counterparts and conduct joint drills. 

In April, the 32nd Chinese naval escort fleet departed for a four-month mission in the Gulf of Aden and Somali waters from Zhoushan, an island city of East China’s Zhejiang Province. (People’s Daily app)

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13 killed, 4 injured after boundary wall collapses in India's Mumbai

Up to 13 people were killed and four others critically injured after a boundary wall collapsed in India's financial center of Mumbai on Tuesday (at 2:00 am local time).

This, following days of heavy rain.

A disaster management spokesperson said three to five people are feared to have been trapped under the debris of the wall.

This is the second incident of a boundary wall collapse in four days.

On Saturday, 15 persons died after a boundary wall collapsed on adjacent slums in Pune. (Xinhua)

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Antarctic sea ice in dizzying decline since 2014: study

After mysteriously expanding for decades, Antarctica's sea ice cover melted by an area four times greater than France in just a few years and now stands at a record low, according to a study published Monday.

Scientists already knew Antarctica was thawing at an increasing rate, like the Arctic, because of accelerating discharge from glaciers, the rivers of ice that push up slowly against the shore.

But between 1979 and 2014, they observed a phenomenon that was both intriguing and reassuring: the sea ice cover was expanding.

From 2014 to 2017, however, "the Antarctic lost almost as much as the Arctic" over almost 40 years, NASA climatologist Claire Parkinson told AFP, and the trend has continued ever since.

From a peak area of 12.8 million square kilometers, the sea ice cover receded two million square kilometers for reasons that remain unknown. (AFP)

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China pushes renovation of aging residential areas

And China is pushing forward a national initiative to renovate aging urban residential communities as a way of improving the living conditions of hundreds of millions of people as well as shoring up the economy.

A senior official said local governments had reported 170,000 urban communities in need of renovation, covering about 100 million residents.

In March, Premier Li Keqiang said in the Government Work Report that authorities would support the renovation of old urban residential communities across the country this year. (China Daily)

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And that’s People’s Daily Tonight.  Thanks for joining us.

(Produced by David Nye and Zhan Huilan)