A Chinese court has ruled in favor of Apple in design patent disputes between the Cupertino, California company and a domestic phone-maker, overturning a ban on selling iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus phones in China, Xinhua news agency reported.

Last May, a Beijing patent regulator ordered Apple’s Chinese subsidiary and a local retailer Zoomflight to stop selling the iPhones after Shenzhen Baili Marketing Services lodged a complaint, claiming that the patent for the design of its mobile phone 100c was being infringed by the iPhone sales.

Apple and Zoomflight took the Beijing Intellectual Property Office’s ban to court.

The Beijing Intellectual Property Court on Friday revoked the ban, saying Apple and Zoomflight did not violate Shenzhen Baili’s design patent for 100c phones.

The court ruled that the regulator did not follow due procedures in ordering the ban while there was no sufficient proof to claim the designs constituted a violation of intellectual property rights.

Representatives of Beijing Intellectual Property Office and Shenzhen Baili said they would take time to decide whether to appeal the ruling, according to Xinhua.

In a related ruling, the same court denied a request by Apple to demand stripping Shenzhen Baili of its design patent for 100c phones.

Apple first filed the request to the Patent Reexamination Board of State Intellectual Property Office. The board rejected the request, but Apple lodged a lawsuit against the rejection.

The Beijing Intellectual Property Court on Friday ruled to maintain the board’s decision. It is unclear if Apple will appeal.
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Indonesia’s air force says an American military plane made an emergency landing at an airport in Indonesia’s Aceh province.

Air Vice Marshall Jemi Trisonjaya says the U.S. Air Force plane requested permission to land Friday after one of its four engines failed.

Trisonjaya said Saturday that permission was granted and the Boeing 707 successfully landed at Sultan Iskandar Muda airport in Banda Aceh, the capital of Aceh province. The plane was carrying 20 military personnel to Japan’s Haneda airport from Diego Garcia, an American military base in central Indian Ocean.

Trisonjaya said no one on board the plane was injured.

The cause of the plane’s engine failure was unclear.
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The first democratically elected president of the Maldives said Saturday that he has signed an agreement with his one-time archrival and former strongman to try to restore democracy in the archipelago state.

Former President Mohamed Nasheed told The Associated Press that the immediate goal of the agreement, which was also signed by two opposition party leaders, is to form a majority in a parliament now controlled by lawmakers supporting President Yameen Abdul Gayoom.

Nasheed said that as a result, they would be able to reform institutions like the elections commission and the judiciary, which he says are politicized, to enable a free and fair presidential election next year.

The 85-member parliament’s majority will be tested when a vote to oust the speaker is taken up on Monday. Currently there are 21 lawmakers supporting Nasheed and eight votes with the two other parties, which are party to the agreement.

Former strongman Maumoon Abdul Gayoom runs a rival faction within the Progressive Party of Maldives, which is led by the current president, his half brother. The PPM has 48 lawmakers and the former strongman’s faction says it has enough support within the party to give the opposition a majority.

The agreement says that the parties will work to safeguard civil and political rights, ensure that free and fair elections are held, and ensure that those jailed on politically motivated charges are released.

Nasheed was jailed in 2015 for 13 years for ordering the arrest of a senior judge when he was president in 2012. However, he traveled to Britain last year on medical leave and received asylum there.

Three other leading politicians have also been jailed after trials criticized internationally for a lack of due process.

A 2015 constitutional amendment allowing foreigners to purchase land in the Maldives will also be reversed, Nasheed said. His party has accused President Gayoom of planning to sell 21 tiny islands to a member of the Saudi royal family.

Maumoon Abdul Gayoom ruled the Maldives with tight controls from 1978 to 2008. Nasheed, who was a pro-democracy activist, was jailed many times under his administration. Gayoom led democratic reforms in his later years as president and lost to Nasheed in the Maldives’ first democratic election, held in 2008.
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New data shows that parts of New Zealand’s South Island moved several meters closer to the North Island during last November’s 7.8 magnitude earthquake.

The data, including satellite radar imagery, shows that parts of New Zealand’s South Island have shifted more than 5 meters closer to the North Island, and that some areas were raised by up to 8 meters.

Other information has come from observations on the ground and the analysis of coastal regions by GNS science, a New Zealand government research agency.

The tremor, near the tourist town of Kaikoura, ruptured a swath of land almost 200 kilometers long.

Research coming out

GNS has published the first of 10 papers on the powerful quake in mid-November 2016 in the international journal Science. Two people were killed when the magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck and Kaikoura was cut off by landslides.

Ian Hamling is the lead author of the research paper. He says the shifting of the earth in New Zealand occurred when powerful seismic forces pulled the ground in different directions.

“It is kind of like a shearing, so I guess the classic people always think of is a San Andreas-style fault, where you get the two sides of the fault zone move in opposite directions,” Hamling said. “And so that is what we see, is that parts of inland Kaikoura up to Cape Campbell have gone to the northeast and then in some areas to the south of that have gone in the opposite direction.”

The earthquake struck last November northeast of the city of Christchurch. It was felt in the New Zealand capital, Wellington, on the North Island, 200 kilometers away.

Shaky Isles

Christchurch is still recovering from a devastating 2011 earthquake that killed 185 people and destroyed the city center.

New Zealand is known as the Shaky Isles. The South Pacific nation lies on the unpredictable Ring of Fire that circles almost the entire Pacific rim.

Each year more than 15,000 earthquakes are recorded in New Zealand, but only about 150 are large enough to be felt.

The research paper, led by GNS, included the work of 29 co-authors from 11 national and international institutes such as the NASA laboratory in California and the University of Leeds in Britain.
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Philippine soldiers Saturday rescued one of two Filipino cargo ship crewmen taken captive two days ago by suspected Abu Sayyaf militants, a security official said.

The troops recovered Aurelio Agacac, the ship captain, in the remote village of Basakan in the southern Philippine province of Basilan, said Colonel Juvymax Uy, commander of the military’s 104th Brigade and Joint Task Force Basilan.

The kidnappers took Agacac and his companion Laurencio Tiro captive from a cargo ship off Basilan on Thursday, only hours after soldiers rescued two Malaysians held for about eight months on a southern island.

Uy said the abductors were forced to abandon Agacac to delay the pursuing troops and evade a firefight.

Uy said the soldiers also captured a wounded suspect during the pursuit who died while being transported to the hospital in Basilan.

Uy did not confirm that the kidnappers were Abu Sayyaf members.

Abu Sayyaf, a small but violent Islamist group known for kidnappings, beheadings, bombings and extortion, is still holding a number of Filipino and foreign nationals captive, including some Indonesians and Malaysians.

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has threatened to impose martial law in the south, home to the majority of Filipino Muslims, to address the security problem there.
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A teenage blogger from Singapore whose online posts blasting his government landed in him jail was granted asylum to remain in the United States, an immigration judge in Chicago ruled Friday.

Amos Yee has been detained by federal immigration authorities since December when he was taken into custody at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport. Attorneys said the 18-year-old could be released from a Wisconsin detention center as early as Monday. 

Judge Samuel Cole issued a 13-page decision more than two weeks after Yee’s closed-door hearing on the asylum application.

“Yee has met his burden of showing that he suffered past persecution on account of his political opinion and has a well-founded fear of future persecution in Singapore,” Cole wrote.

Jailed twice in Singapore

Yee left Singapore with the intention of seeking asylum in the U.S. after being jailed for several weeks in 2015 and 2016. He was accused of hurting the religious feelings of Muslims and Christians in the multiethnic city-state; Yee is an atheist. 

However, many of his blog and social media posts criticized Singapore’s leaders. He created controversy in 2015 as the city-state was mourning the death of its first prime minister and he posted an expletive-laden video about Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew just after his death.

Such open criticism of political leaders is discouraged in Singapore. The case, which raised questions about free speech and censorship, has been closely watched abroad.

Cole said testimony during Yee’s hearing showed that while the Singapore government’s stated reason for punishing him involved religion, “its real purpose was to stifle Yee’s political speech.” He said Yee’s prison sentence was “unusually long and harsh” especially for his age. 

Officials at Singapore’s embassy in Washington, D.C., have not addressed the case and messages left for the government on Saturday morning in Singapore weren’t immediately returned.

‘Infinite amount of ideas’

Yee’s attorney Sandra Grossman said her client was elated with the news.

“He’s very excited to begin new life in the United States,” Grossman said. 

Yee told the AP in a phone interview from jail this month that he feared returning to Singapore. But he said he’d continue to speak out and had planned a line of T-shirts and started writing a book about his experiences.

“I have an infinite amount of ideas of what to do,” he told the AP.

Homeland opposed asylum

Department of Homeland Security attorneys had opposed the asylum bid, saying Yee’s case didn’t qualify as persecution based on political beliefs. It was unclear whether they’d appeal the decision or if Yee would have to remain imprisoned if they did. Attorneys have 30 days to appeal.

Officials with DHS and Immigration and Customs Enforcement didn’t immediately return messages Friday. A spokeswoman for the Executive Office for Immigration Review, which oversees U.S. immigration courts, declined comment. 
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