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Leading members of China's parliament said on Saturday two Hong Kong lawmakers-elect who called for the city's independence from China had damaged the territory's rule of law and posed a grave threat to China's sovereignty and security.

The comments, carried on state TV, come ahead of what is expected to effectively be a ruling by Beijing on the fate of Yau Wai-ching, 25, and Baggio Leung, 30, who set off fierce debate when they pledged allegiance to the "Hong Kong nation" and displayed a "Hong Kong is not China" banner during a swearing-in ceremony for the city's legislative council in October.

Britain returned Hong Kong to Chinese control in 1997 under a "one country, two systems" formula that gave the territory wide-ranging autonomy, including judicial freedom guided by a mini-constitution called the Basic Law.

China's parliament, the National People's Congress, has a right to weigh in on the Basic Law, and on Saturday senior members of the NPC discussed a draft interpretation of the Law's article that requires Legislative Council members and other officials to pledge loyalty to Hong Kong as a part of China when taking office.

The Chinese lawmakers agreed that the legislators-elect from Hong Kong had "humiliated the nation and the people", according to China Central Television (CCTV).

They "brazenly challenged the Basic Law, impeded the normal operations of Hong Kong Special Administrative Region political organs, damaged Hong Kong's rule of law, assaulted the baseline principles of 'one country, two systems', and created a serious threat to the nation's sovereignty and security", it said.

"If this kind of situation continues it will harm the immediate interests of the people of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and the interests of national development. The central government cannot sit by indifferently," they were quoted as saying.

As such, an NPC interpretation was "very timely and extremely necessary".

The oath-taking incident made waves in the former colony, where the topic of independence from China was once regarded as taboo but has come to the fore since months of pro-democracy protests in 2014 failed to secure any concessions from Beijing.

The parliamentary meeting in Beijing ends on Monday, the state news agency Xinhua said.

Earlier in the day, the Communist Party's top newspaper, the People's Daily, ran an editorial that said anyone "who splits the nation or promotes 'Hong Kong independence' is ... unqualified to stand for election or hold public office provided for in the Basic Law".

The NPC Standing Committee has interpreted the Basic Law four times since 1997, including once when neither the city government nor its courts requested it.

After the abortive swearing-in of Yau and Leung, Hong Kong's chief executive filed a lawsuit seeking an injunction to prevent another ceremony for them taking place.

Hong Kong's High Court struck down that request but approved a judicial review of the pair's membership of the legislature.

The Hong Kong Bar Association has said an intervention by Beijing now, as a local court was hearing the case, would deal a severe blow to the city's judicial independence and undermine international confidence in Hong Kong's autonomy.

(Reporting by John Ruwitch; Additional reporting by Venus Wu in HONG KONG; Editing by Catherine Evans and Stephen Powell)

Rural Mexico prays for Trump defeat

By Lizbeth Diaz | MOLCAXAC, MEXICO

In the small southern market town of Molcaxac, 650 miles (1050 km) from the U.S. border, Alicia Villa is praying to God that Republican candidate Donald Trump does not become the next president of the United States.

Over the past two decades, as Mexico's rural economy stalled, Molcaxac and hundreds of towns like it became dependent on dollars sent by relatives who made the perilous journey north, a lifeline she fears will be cut by a Trump White House.

Villa, 65, said funds sent by a daughter working illegally as a house cleaner in Sacramento, California have supported her family for 12 years because the work she does as receptionist in Molcaxac does not pay enough to make ends meet.

"I am Catholic and I have asked God and the Virgin of Asuncion that he lose," Villa said of Trump, placing her head in her hands and intoning a prayer in the square of the deeply religious hill town dominated by a striking blue church.

Inside, the church was adorned with notes thanking migrant relatives for money sent to help build homes, start businesses and pay for marriages in the town surrounded by rivers, mountains and meadows in the state of Puebla.

"Trump says he will kick out everyone who doesn't have papers and we really need them to be there," said Villa, adding that she had not seen some family members living in the United States in 20 years.

Trump, a real-estate tycoon who has narrowed the gap with Democratic rival Hillary Clinton ahead of next Tuesday's vote, has vowed to make it harder for illegal immigrants to live and work in the United States, to increase deportations and to limit remittances unless Mexico pays billions for a wall along the nearly 2,000-mile (3,200-km) U.S.-Mexico border.

Such policies would take a heavy toll in Molcaxac, where local authorities say more than 70 percent of the population lives on remittances sent home by immigrants to the United States, many of them undocumented.

"Our town has improved a lot since our people started to leave for the United States," said stonemason Esteban Marquez, whose workshop was partly funded by remittances from one of his children.

'NOTHING FOR THEM' HERE

Mexico has more than 5 million citizens living without regular papers in the United States, or about half of the entire undocumented population.

Those men and women send back a large chunk of Mexico's foreign exchange earnings, contributing more than $20 billion in remittances wired this year through September.

According to Mexico's Central Bank, Puebla received $1 billion in remittances in the same period, making it the fifth biggest recipient among Mexican states.

So many people from Puebla live in the New York area that New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, a Trump supporter, visited the state in 2014. Couriers have grown rich transporting salsas and fresh cheese to homesick natives up north.

The money has transformed places like Molcaxac, a picturesque town dotted with well-built homes attesting to the flow of dollars.

It is not just the potential loss of income Trump could spark that worries Molcaxac locals.

The lack of employment in rural Mexico is one of the main reasons drug gangs find it easy to recruit among young people and those deported from the United States, they say.

"Here in Mexico, the truth is there is nothing for them," said stonemason Marquez. "The people who stay need to survive, and since there is no work, they get pulled into crime."

'VOTE FOR THE LADY'

Opinion polls in the run-up to the election suggest that Villa's prayers stand a good chance of being answered, with most putting Clinton consistently ahead of her Republican rival.

But the polls also show her losing ground in the final stretch. Real Clear Politics, which averages the results of most major polls, shows Clinton's advantage had declined from 4.6 percentage points to 1.7 points over the past week.

Even those of more modest means in Molcaxac are on edge with America's election.

"Only God knows if they are going to be able to stay there," said Serafina Martinez, who at 70 still works in the fields.

She worries it would be hard to survive without the little her son in California sends when he can.

"I would like him to keep helping us with pennies," said Martinez, her curved back laden with firewood and groceries.

Still, the uncertainty has also helped locals in an unexpected way: the Mexican peso's value plunges every time Trump advances, making the dollar remittances stretch further.

But there is no doubt in the minds of Molcaxac's townspeople that they would rather see Clinton in the White House.

Clinton has proposed comprehensive immigration reform with a path to citizenship, and says she will end detention of immigrant families.

"I think she will win, and that gives us hope that our relatives will be able to regularize (their papers)," said Teresa Amador, selling flowers in the main market. "I have a son who was born there, and he is going to vote for the lady."

(Writing by Natalie Schachar; Editing by Frank Jack Daniel and Mary Milliken)

Ireland checking if Irish Islamic State supporter in Mosul suicide attack

By Conor Humphries | DUBLIN

Ireland's foreign ministry is investigating reports that an Irish citizen died in a suicide attack near the Iraqi city of Mosul, a spokesman said on Saturday.

The Islamic State’s (IS) al-Jazeerah Province in northern Iraq on Friday said Abu Usama al-Irelandi detonated an explosive-laden vehicle, killing and wounding dozens, the SITE Intelligence Group, a U.S. company that monitors Islamist websites, reported.

Abu Usama is a pseudonym used by Irish Islamic State sympathizer Terence Kelly. Pictures posted by Islamic State sympathizers on Twitter showed a man resembling Kelly posing with a machine gun in front of an armored car.

"The martyrdom-seeking brother Abu Usama al-Irelandi - may Allah accept him - set off with and detonated his explosives-laden vehicle on another gathering of apostates, in Aghazil al-Kabir village, south of Tal Afar, killing and wounding dozens of them, and destroying several of their vehicles," SITE quoted the IS statement as saying.

Tal Afar is around 80 kilometers west of Mosul. Reuters could not immediately confirm the report.

Ireland's Foreign Ministry said it was looking into reports of an Irish citizen's death, but declined to comment on their identity.

"The department is aware of media reports concerning an Irish citizen in Iraq and is seeking to clarify the situation," the Irish Foreign Ministry spokesman said.

Kelly was brought up Catholic in central Dublin and converted to Islam in his early 30s in Saudi Arabia, where he worked as a nurse for three years, converting in prison after he was arrested for illegally brewing alcohol. He also used the pseudonym Khalid Kelly.

Kelly repeatedly praised al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden in interviews with the Irish media and was arrested in 2011 for making threats against U.S. President Barack Obama ahead of his visit to Ireland.

He traveled to Pakistan and later told interviewers that he had trained with militants there.

Iraqi troops on Saturday advanced towards Mosul, battling for the last town left between them and the Islamic State stronghold to the north, which was already under assault from special forces inside its eastern districts.

Recapturing Mosul would effectively crush the Iraqi half of a self-proclaimed caliphate declared by Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi from the pulpit of a Mosul mosque two years ago. His Islamist group also controls large parts of east Syria.

(Reporting by Conor Humphries; Editing by Alexander Smith)

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