US Vice President Mike Pence on Monday told governors that distribution of a COVID-19 vaccine could begin by the third week of this month, signaling that US regulators would swiftly approve an emergency authorization for the first vaccinations. “We strongly believe the vaccine distribution process could begin the week of Dec. 14,” Pence told governors, according to a summary of the call provided by the office of Washington Governor Jay Inslee. “The American people deserve to know the cavalry is on the way.” Pence told governors that they would have the final say on vaccine distribution as the “ultimate arbiters” in their states, the summary said. Moderna Inc joined Pfizer Inc on Monday in requesting that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issue an emergency use authorization for its vaccine. Both vaccines are more than 90 percent effective, according to preliminary clinical trial results, although their distribution challenges include requiring two injections. US Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar, US FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn, US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield and US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci also participated in the call. An FDA advisory panel is scheduled to meet on Thursday next week to discuss the vaccines. Azar told governors that distribution could begin within 24 hours of regulatory approval, while Pence said the administration believes that would be the week of Dec. 14th. Vaccines would be largely administered by pharmacies, Azar said. Some governors expressed surprise to learn that vaccines would be distributed to states at first based on a per-capita formula, counting only those aged 18 and older. After the call, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz said that the administration is undecided on who should be vaccinated first. “The Trump administration believes you vaccinate those 65 and older,” Walz told reporters. “The CDC, Dr
The COVID-19 pandemic has cast a pall over Christmas celebrations in Bethlehem, all but shutting down the biblical town revered as Jesus’ birthplace at the height of the normally cheery holiday season. Missing are the thousands of international pilgrims who normally descend upon the town. Restaurants, hotels and souvenir shops are closed. The renowned Christmas tree lighting service is to be limited to a small group of authorized people, as with church services on Christmas Eve. “Bethlehem is dead,” said Maryana al-Arja, owner of the 120-room Angel Hotel on the outskirts of Bethlehem. The hotel was the site of the West Bank’s first COVID-19 outbreak — when a group of Greek tourists came down with the virus in March. She kept her 25 workers on staff for several months, but ultimately could not continue to pay them. Al-Arja, who herself was infected with the virus, said she that has been forced to close the hotel and lay off the entire staff. “We had 351 tourist groups booked in our hotel this year, each one 150 people, but they all canceled,” she said. Elyas al-Arja, the head of the city’s hotel association, said that Bethlehem received about 3 million tourists last year. With Israel, the main entry point for international visitors to the region, banning tourists because of the virus, and the West Bank’s border crossing with Jordan closed to foreigners, that number is close to zero this year, he said. “Sixty percent of the city relies on tourism, and their income disappeared when the tourists disappeared,” said Elyas al-Arja, a cousin of the Angel Hotel owner. The Ambassador Hotel, which is near the Church of the Nativity, built on the site where Christians believe Jesus was born, has reopened one floor in hopes that some local visitors might want to come celebrate in the coming weeks. Mahmoud Tarman,
‘COMPROMISE’: There has been a 1,000 percent increase in the content that Facebook censors in Vietnam, the biggest country by revenue for the company in Southeast Asia
Facebook and Google are fast becoming “human rights-free zones” in Vietnam, Amnesty International said yesterday, accusing the tech titans of helping censor peaceful dissent and political expression in the country. Communist Vietnam has long jailed its critics, but has come under fire in the past few years for targeting users on Facebook, a popular forum for advocates in the country where all independent media is banned. The social network admitted earlier this year that it was blocking content deemed illegal by authorities, while its latest transparency report revealed a nearly 1,000 percent increase in the content it censors on government orders, compared with the previous six months. Amnesty said in a report that it had interviewed 11 advocates whose content had been restricted from view in Vietnam by Facebook this year. The rights group also said three others had similar content censored by Google-owned YouTube. One of them, Nguyen Van Trang, who fled an arrest warrant in Vietnam for his involvement in a pro-democracy group, said that Facebook had since May restricted every piece of content he posted about Communist Party of Vietnam General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong and senior party member Tran Quoc Vuong. Trang also said some of his posts on controversial issues, such as land disputes, were blocked from view in Vietnam by YouTube. “I feel angry about it,” he told reporters. “For social activists, these platforms play an important role in influencing people with regard to progressive values such as democracy, human rights, civil society.” “The compromise between Facebook and Google is not only the act of blocking information, but it also hinders the progress of a nation, where people do not have many opportunities to participate in political activities,” he said. More than 53 million people use Facebook in Vietnam, accounting for more than half the population. The platform is also a crucial
Twitter has suspended a Thai royalist account linked to the palace that a Reuters analysis found was connected to thousands of others created in the past few weeks spreading posts in favor of Thai King Maha Vajiralongkorn and the monarchy. The Reuters review found tens of thousands of tweets that an expert said appeared to be from accounts amplifying royalist messaging in a push to counter a months-long protest movement that has swelled from opposing the government to breaking a long-standing taboo by challenging the monarchy. Internal army training documents reviewed by Reuters showed evidence of a coordinated information campaign designed to spread favorable information and discredit opponents. The pro-monarchy @jitarsa_school account was suspended after Reuters sought comment yesterday from Twitter on the royalist campaign on the social media platform, where protesters have long had a strong presence. Protesters and royalists have cited the importance of social media in propelling the protest movement, which has become the biggest challenge in decades to the monarchy as well as the government of former junta leader Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha. Created in September, @jitarsa_school had more than 48,000 followers before its suspension. “The account in question was suspended for violating our rules on spam and platform manipulation,” a Twitter representative said on Sunday. She said the suspension was in line with the company’s policies and not a result of the Reuters request for comment. The account’s profile had said that it trained people for the Royal Volunteers program, which is run by the Royal Office. A Facebook page for the Royal Volunteers School, which posts pro-monarchy videos and news of the program, also identifies the Twitter account as its own. In the past few weeks, royalist hashtags have begun trending on Twitter, an important platform for opponents of the government even before protests began in July. The Reuters analysis found
Thai police on Monday charged five key leaders of the country’s pro-democracy protest movement under the kingdom’s tough royal defamation laws, the first such use of the controversial legislation in two years. Section 112 of the Thai penal code is one of the world’s toughest lese majeste laws, shielding the powerful King Maha Vajiralongkorn from criticism. However, in the past few months leaders of the pro-democracy movement have called for reforms to the monarchy — including for the law’s abolition — a move that has sent shockwaves through Thai society. Human rights advocate Anon Numpa — one of the most prominent faces rallying for royal reform — and four others arrived at a Bangkok police station for questioning on Monday. “The police charged us under section 112,” Anon told reporters after leaving the station. “We have all denied it.” They have been charged over their role in a September rally, and if found guilty face up to 15 years in prison per charge. They have led dozens of protests since July, the largest drawing tens of thousands supporting their demands. They are also calling for a rewrite of the military-scripted constitution and the resignation of Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, a former army chief who came to power in a coup in 2014. Scores of protesters have been hit with sedition charges, while authorities have stepped up enforcement tactics in the past few weeks — deploying water cannons and tear gas against unarmed demonstrators. Protest leader Panupong “Mike” Jadnok remained defiant on Monday, saying that the 112 charge will not deter them from their goals. “I stand on our ideology ... we will not be bound by the dictatorship and we do not accept section 112 as a law,” he said. The leaders were allowed to leave the police station after being questioned and
CHINA-AUSTRALIA CONTRETEMPS: The company said that comments on political issues or foreign policy by official government accounts did not violate its guidelines
Twitter yesterday rebuffed Australian calls to remove a Beijing official’s incendiary post targeting Australian troops, as China doubled down on criticism in the face of mounting international condemnation. Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Zhao Lijian (趙立堅) sparked outrage in Canberra on Monday when he posted a staged image of a man dressed as an Australian soldier holding a bloody knife to the throat of an Afghan child holding a sheep, with other body shapes hidden below a large Australian flag. Zhao’s post seized on the findings of a recent report from a four-year-long official investigation into the conduct of Australian special forces soldiers in Afghanistan, but included the digitally altered image. The post came just days after Australian prosecutors launched an investigation into 19 members of the nation’s military over alleged war crimes committed in Afghanistan between 2005 and 2016. Twitter said it had marked the post as “sensitive,” but added that comments on topical political issues or “foreign policy saber-rattling” by official government accounts were generally not in violation of its rules. Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Monday had called the post “repugnant,” holding a virtual news conference from quarantine to demand Twitter take it down and China apologize. He said Beijing should be “totally ashamed” of the “outrageous and disgusting slur” against the Australian armed forces. Some Australian allies expressed concern over the tweet, including New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. “In this case an image has been used that is not factually correct, that is not a genuine image, so we have raised that directly with Chinese authorities,” she told reporters. The French Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the post was “unworthy of the diplomatic standards we have the right to expect from a country like China.” A spokesperson said the image was “insulting for all the countries whose armed forces have been engaged
Azerbaijani soldiers yesterday hoisted their country’s flag in the final district given up by Armenia under a peace deal that ended weeks of fighting over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region. A column of Azerbaijani military trucks entered the Lachin district overnight, taking over the last of three regions around Karabakh handed over by Armenia under the Russian-brokered agreement. Journalists saw soldiers raising the Azerbaijani flag over an administrative building in the town of Lachin in the early hours. Armenia agreed to hand over the three districts — Aghdam, Lachin and Kalbajar — as part of the Nov. 9 deal that stopped an Azerbaijani offensive that had reclaimed swathes of territory lost to Armenian separatists in a 1990s war. Under the agreement, about 2,000 Russian peacekeepers deployed between the two sides and along the Lachin corridor, a 60km route through the district that connects Karabakh’s main city, Stepanakert, to Armenia. Russian military vehicles accompanied Azerbaijani trucks driving along the corridor overnight and were deployed at the main crossroads in Lachin. Most of the town’s residents fled in advance of the takeover, but 48-year-old grocery store owner Levon Gevorgyan said he had decided to stay. “I am afraid only of God. I have been here for 22 years, I started from nothing, I built everything,” he said. “I hope I will be able to continue, I still have a loan to pay. If I have to leave, I will burn everything.” As in Aghdam and Kalbajar, residents of Lachin cleared out frantically ahead of the handover, taking livestock, firewood, furniture and even plastic water pipes. Under the agreement, Armenia is losing control of seven districts that it seized around Karabakh in the 1990s — many Azerbaijanis who were forced to flee are now planning to return. The separatists are retaining control over most of Karabakh’s Soviet-era territory, but have lost the key town
ANNIVERSARY: The province’s breakaway movement nominated UK-based exile Benny Wenda as interim president as the region marked the anniversary of a 1961 date
West Papuan leaders have declared a provisional “government-in-waiting” of the contested Indonesian province, as the UN said it was “disturbed by escalating violence” there, including the killing of a child allegedly by security forces. The province marks Independence Day on Dec. 1, the anniversary of West Papua’s declaration of independence from Dutch colonial rule in 1961 and the raising of its now-banned Morning Star flag. The Indonesian military took control of the province in 1962, and it has been subject to a fierce separatist struggle ever since. The independence movement, the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP), has laid out a new constitution and nominated exiled leader Benny Wenda as its interim president. “Today, we honor and recognize all our forefathers who fought and died for us by finally establishing a united government-in-waiting,” said Wenda, who is based in the UK. “Embodying the spirit of the people of West Papua, we are ready to run our country. “As laid out in our provisional constitution, a future Republic of West Papua will be the world’s first green state, and a beacon of human rights — the opposite of decades of bloody Indonesian colonization. Today, we take another step towards our dream of a free, independent and liberated West Papua,” he added. Ahead of yesterday, which is often a date of significant unrest and violence, Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani said: “We are disturbed by escalating violence over the past weeks and months in the Indonesian provinces of Papua and West Papua and the increased risk of renewed tension and violence.” Shamdasani said in one incident on Nov. 22, a 17-year-old was shot dead and another teenager injured in an alleged police shootout. The boy’s body was found at Limbaga mountain in the Gome district of West Papua. She also cited the
A breakthrough on an initial agreement reached between Taliban and government negotiators has been held up at the last minute after the insurgent group balked at the document’s preamble because it mentioned the Afghan government by name. Teams representing the Taliban and the Afghan government have been negotiating in the Qatari capital since September to reach a consensus on the modalities of peace talks, moving forward to help end decades of war in Afghanistan. “The negotiating teams have so far agreed on all 21 articles that provide guiding principles for the negotiations,” Afghan President Ashraf Ghani’s spokesman Sediq Sediqqi said in a statement on Monday. “At this time, they continue to debate the preamble, in which some issues need further clarification.” Government and diplomatic sources said that when it came to signing the document last month, which was to include references to the “Islamic Republic of Afghanistan” — the official name of the Afghan government — the Taliban backed off. The Taliban refuse to refer to the Afghan negotiating team as representatives of the government, as they contest the legitimacy of Ghani’s election. “[The government and Taliban] prepared to sign the agreement,” a diplomat in Kabul familiar with process said, adding that the lead government negotiator was to sign the agreement as “chief negotiator for the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan.” “The Taliban refused to accept that,” the diplomat said. Another diplomatic source said there had been ongoing discord over the term “republic” and the Taliban’s reference to itself as an “Islamic Emirate.” “The differences over the words “republic” and “emirate” triggered a deep suspicion between the negotiators,” he said. “The problem is complex as it leads to [implications over] the vision and aspiration of a country and how it wants to projected and perceived.” One government source said the Afghan delegation would not walk away from talks, but feared
A powerful new telescope in Outback Australia has mapped vast areas of the universe in record-breaking time, revealing a million new galaxies and opening the way to new discoveries, the country’s national science agency said yesterday. The A$188 million (US$138 million) radio telescope, dubbed the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP), was able to map about 3 million galaxies in just 300 hours. Comparable surveys of the sky have taken as long as 10 years. “It’s really a game changer,” said astronomer David McConnell, who led the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) study of the southern sky at the Murchison Radioastronomy Observatory in Western Australia. What makes this telescope unique is its wide field of view, using receivers designed by CSIRO, which allow it to take panoramic pictures of the sky in sharper detail than before. The telescope only needed to combine 903 images to map the sky, compared with other all-sky radio surveys that require tens of thousands of images. Having a telescope that can survey the sky in a few weeks or months means the process can be repeated again and again in a relatively short space of time, allowing astronomers to systematically spot and track changes. “Even with this first pass we’ve got right now, compared with previous images, we’ve already found some unusual objects,” McConnell said, including some unusual stars that undergo violent outbursts.
PROTEIN FOLDING: The program shows how to fold proteins into 3D shapes, which scientists said would help unlock the machinery of life
Having risen to fame on its superhuman performance at playing games, the artificial intelligence (AI) group DeepMind has cracked a serious scientific problem that has stumped researchers for half a century. With its latest AI program, AlphaFold, the company and research laboratory showed it can predict how proteins fold into 3D shapes, a fiendishly complex process that is fundamental to understanding the biological machinery of life. Independent scientists said the breakthrough would help researchers tease apart the mechanisms that drive some diseases and pave the way for designer medicines, more nutritious crops and “green enzymes” that can break down plastic pollution. DeepMind said it had started work with a handful of scientific groups and would focus initially on malaria, sleeping sickness and leishmaniasis, a parasitic disease. “It marks an exciting moment for the field,” DeepMind founder and chief executive Demis Hassabis said. “These algorithms are now becoming mature enough and powerful enough to be applicable to really challenging scientific problems.” Royal Society president Venki Ramakrishnan called the work “a stunning advance” that occurred “decades before many people in the field would have predicted.” DeepMind is best known for its run of human-trouncing programs that achieved supremacy in chess, go, Starcraft II and old-school Atari classics. The games provided a training ground for programs that, once powerful enough, would be unleashed on real-world problems. Protein folding has been a grand challenge in biology for 50 years. An arcane form of molecular origami, its importance is hard to overstate. When researchers know how a protein folds up, they can start to uncover what it does. Scientists have identified more than 200 million proteins, but structures are known for only a fraction of them. Traditionally, the shapes are discovered through meticulous lab work that can take years. Proteins are chains of amino acids that can twist and bend into a
TOUGH ASSIGNMENT: Top of the agenda for the 74-year-old is helping the economy recover from the downturn in growth and layoffs caused by the COVID-19 pandemic
US president-elect Joe Biden on Monday said that he is to nominate former US Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen to lead the US Department of the Treasury, topping a slate of economic officials who would break ethnic and gender barriers in the US government. If the nominations win US Senate approval, Yellen would be the first female US secretary of the treasury, and would be joined in the executive branch by the first African American to serve as her deputy and as head of the White House economic council, as well as the first South Asian in a key budget role. “We face great challenges as a country right now. To recover, we must restore the American dream — a society where each person can rise to their potential and dream even bigger for their children,” Yellen wrote on Twitter following the announcement. “As Treasury Secretary, I will work every day towards rebuilding that dream for all.” Top of the agenda for the 74-year-old, who previously made history as the first female Federal Reserve chair from 2014 to 2018, is helping the US economy recover from the sharp downturn in growth and mass layoffs caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Unless lawmakers are able to overcome their differences in the closing weeks of the year, she is likely to be tasked with convincing Democrats and Republicans in the US Congress to pass another spending bill to power the recovery amid a months-long deadlock on new economic aid. A study released last week by The Century Foundation think tank said that 12 million Americans would be receiving aid from US government programs that are due to expire at the end of this year. “As we get to work to control the virus, this is the team that will deliver immediate economic relief for the American people during this
OCEANS APART: Last-ditch UK-EU trade talks continued in London this week, but fishing rights remain a key stumbling block to securing a deal by the end of the year
The British government yesterday urged businesses to get ready for the end of the Brexit transition period at the end of the year, as talks on a free-trade deal with the EU remained deadlocked. British ministers said time was running out and that firms need to finalize their preparations to avoid potential disruption when the new rules start on Jan. 1. The UK formally left the EU on Jan. 31, nearly four years after a referendum on membership that divided the kingdom and paralyzed its politics. Under the divorce agreement struck with Brussels, the UK remains bound by EU rules for the rest of the year. Nerves over life outside the EU are increasingly frayed, given the impasse in trade negotiations, but the British government has remained upbeat and argues that the UK would prosper whatever the result of the talks. “Regardless of the outcome of our negotiations with the EU, there are guaranteed changes that businesses must prepare for now,” British Minister for the Cabinet Office Michael Gove said. “There is no time to lose.” The plea for readiness came as the British government also launched a new Border Operations Centre to be manned around the clock by a team of officials to monitor the UK border. It is to rely on software that gathers information about the flow of goods and people in real time. The new technology would allow the government and local police to make “rapid decisions to ensure any disruption is minimized,” the British government said. Brexit supporters narrowly won the argument for leaving the EU in 2016 with a claim that it would restore the UK’s control over its borders, but there are fears the kingdom’s imminent departure from the EU’s single market and customs union after nearly 50 years could cause chaos at ports and logistics hubs. Businesses have complained of inadequate
Deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest surged to a 12-year high this year, government data showed on Monday, with destruction soaring since Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro took office and weakened environmental enforcement. Destruction of the world’s largest rainforest this year rose 9.5 percent from a year earlier to 11,088km2, according to data from Brazilian National Institute for Space Research, seven times the size of London. That means Brazil is to miss its own target, established under a 2009 climate change law, to reduce deforestation to about 3,900km2. The consequences for missing the target are not laid out in the law, but could leave the Brazilian government open to lawsuits. The official annual measure, known as PRODES, is taken by comparing satellite images from the end of July with those from the beginning of August last year. The dates are chosen to coincide with the Amazon’s dry season, when there is less cloud cover to interfere with the calculations. The Amazon is the world’s largest rainforest and its protection is crucial to stopping catastrophic climate change because of the vast amount of carbon dioxide it absorbs. The latest annual destruction is a substantial increase from the 7,536km2 that were deforested in 2018, the year before Bolsonaro took office. While environmentalists blamed the government for the rise, Brazilian officials hailed the data as a sign of progress, as the increase was far lower than the 34 percent rise recorded last year. “While we are not here to celebrate this, it does signify that the efforts we are making are beginning to bear fruit,” Brazilian Vice President Hamilton Mourao told reporters at the institute’s headquarters in the Sao Paulo satellite city of Sao Jose dos Campos. Bolsonaro has weakened the environmental enforcement agency, and has called for the introduction more commercial farming and mining in the Amazon region, arguing that it would
Environmental groups yesterday faced off against Shell at a Dutch court in a landmark bid to force the oil giant to meet emissions targets in the Paris climate deal. The case being heard in The Hague was launched last year by the Netherlands branch of Friends of the Earth and backed by 17,300 Dutch citizens who also registered as complainants. Six other non-governmental organizations, including the Dutch branches of Greenpeace and Action Aid, are backing the lawsuit against the Anglo-Dutch multinational, whose failure to act “endangers the future of our children,” they said. The 2015 Paris Agreement committed all nations to cut carbon emissions to limit warming to 2°C above preindustrial levels and encouraged them to go down to 1.5°C. Friends of the Earth said it was impossible to meet the goals without action from the world’s “biggest polluters,” such as Shell, which it said emits twice as much carbon dioxide as the entire Netherlands. “This is a historic moment because we are backed by so many people,” Friends of the Earth Netherlands director Donald Pols said in a statement. “This is actually ‘the People versus Shell,’ a company that has got away with greenwashing for too long.” There are to be four days of hearings at a district court in The Hague before the case is adjourned. Campaigners do not expect a verdict until the summer next year. Shell said that the claims in the case are “inappropriate and legally without foundation.” The oil giant has said that it would reduce the “net carbon footprint” of the products it sells by 30 percent by 2035, and reach 65 percent by 2050. “What will accelerate the energy transition is effective policy, investment in technology and changing customer behavior. None of which will be achieved with this court action,” a Shell spokesman said in a statement. However, campaigners want the court
Twenty-nine arms control and human rights organizations have signed a letter opposing the sale of US$23 billion of missiles, fighter jets and drones to the United Arab Emirates (UAE), asking the US Congress to block the deal. “The hope is to stop these sales altogether,” said Seth Binder, advocacy officer at the Project on Middle East Democracy, who spearheaded the effort. “But if that is not possible in the short term, this sends an important signal to the incoming [US president-elect Joe] Biden administration that there is a diverse group of organizations that oppose delivery of these weapons.” Three US senators earlier this month proposed legislation to halt the sale, which includes drones from General Atomics, Lockheed Martin F-35s and missiles made by Raytheon, setting up a showdown with US President Donald Trump weeks before he is due to leave office. US law allows senators to force votes on resolutions of disapproval on major arms deal, but to become effective they must first pass both the US Senate and the US House of Representatives. The measure would also need two-third majorities in both the Republican-led Senate and the Democratic-led House to survive a presidential veto. Trump administration officials briefed the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee about the deal on Monday. US Senator Chris Murphy, a Democratic sponsor of the resolutions of disapproval, responded later on Twitter. “Just a mind blowing number of unsettled issues and questions the Administration couldn’t answer. Hard to overstate the danger of rushing this,” Murphy wrote. The sale was approved following a US-brokered agreement in September in which the UAE agreed to normalize relations with Israel. The letter from the rights groups, sent to lawmakers and the US Department of State, said that the planned arms sale would fuel continued harm to civilians, and exacerbate humanitarian crises due to conflicts in Yemen and Libya. Signatories include
UNITED STATES Georgia votes in runoff Georgia voters yesterday were choosing the short-term replacement for late civil rights leader and US representative John Lewis, who died in July at the age of 80. Former Atlanta City councilor Kwanza Hall and former Morehouse College president Robert Franklin are contesting a runoff election. The winner of the two Democrats is to fill the seat until Jan. 3 after Georgia Democratic Party chairwoman Nikema Williams last month easily defeated Republican Angela Stanton King for a full two-year-term starting next month. UNITED KINGDOM SNP eyes independence Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon on Monday said that she would seek a second referendum on independence if her Scottish National Party (SNP) wins elections in May. Sturgeon said that she would use the vote for the parliament in Edinburgh to make the case for a breakaway. “Next May we will ask you, the people of Scotland, to put your trust in us to continue that task of building a better country,” she told the SNP’s virtual annual conference. Scotland chose to remain part of the kingdom in a 2014 referendum and the British government in London has said it considers the issue closed for a generation. EGYPT Extradition request panned Prosecutors on Monday criticized their Italian counterparts’ push to have five police and intelligence officers stand trial in Italy over the 2016 abduction, torture and killing of an Italian researcher in Cairo. Giulio Regeni, 28, disappeared for several days in January 2016 before his body was found on a desert highway north of the capital. Since late 2018, Italian prosecutors have called for Cairo to hand over the five intelligence and police officers. The Egyptian statement said the request was “baseless” and that Regeni’s killer remains unknown. Prosecutors said they would temporarily close their investigation into the death — possibly to prevent any
A CAUTIONARY TALE: Bookseller Lam Wing-kee speaks of the danger that his adopted home Taiwan now faces and the ordeal of his detention in China
Lam Wing-kee (林榮基) leaned forward in his chair, answering quickly and sharply to issue a warning to the people of his new home, Taiwan. “Be ready now,” Lam said. “We should be more alert as citizens, we should get ready,” the 64-year-old Hong Konger said. “If they can take Hong Kong back, the next place, I feel, is Taiwan.” Late in Taipei at Causeway Bay Books Mark II, on the 10th floor of a nondescript building, Lam, a wiry, gray-haired bookseller, was sitting at his desk with a bemused gaze behind thin oval glasses. The desk was neat, but crowded with books and a cash register, with revolutionary banners pinned to the front and mementos entombed under its glass top. Behind him was the single bunk bed where he sleeps. The shop is crammed with shelves of books on history, culture, economics and politics — primarily Chinese, but there are also books on Russian royal family the Romanovs, Russian President Vladimir Putin and former US National Security Agency employee and whistle-blower Edward Snowden, as well as books by political theorist Hannah Arendt. Near the front door are children’s books, including several Winnie-the-Pooh stories — a sly dig at Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) perhaps. Facing them is a makeshift Lennon wall of Post-it notes, a now-illegal symbol of the Hong Kong pro-democracy protests. Lam and his live-in bookshop are both exiles. The bookseller fled Hong Kong to Taiwan last year, reopening Causeway Bay Books to sell a dissident’s education on how and why the Chinese Communist party (CCP) launched its unprecedented crackdown on the previously semi-autonomous territory and accelerated its takeover by decades. Taiwan must heed Hong Kong’s cautionary tale, he said. Lam had spent decades selling critical, political and gossipy titles banned by the CCP before he and four others were disappeared from various locations in Hong Kong, China
When Democratic Party Chairman Wu Chi-wai (胡志偉) decided to serve an extended term in Hong Kong’s Legislative Council, he did not expect to resign two months later. After nearly three decades in politics, the 58-year-old stepped down yesterday. All 15 legislators in the pro-democracy camp have tendered their resignations to protest a Beijing resolution early last month that led to the disqualifications of four of their colleagues. For Wu, quitting was a last resort. He said that staying on would not have changed things, as the pro-Beijing government is determined to push through policies that the pro-democracy camp would not have been able to stop. Democracy advocates would need to rethink how to continue their fight now that so much has changed, Wu said. “I kept my promise, I fought to the end,” he said in an interview, adding that he hopes those who voted for him would not think that they had done so in vain. Wu often delivered impassioned speeches in defense of democracy. He was arrested earlier this year for participating in an unauthorized vigil in remembrance of the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre, and later again last month for contempt and interfering with other lawmakers during a clash in May. Democracy advocates must keep their determination to achieve their goals, even if it takes decades, Wu said. He conceded that he does not yet know the path ahead, but sounded a hopeful note. “I’m getting into a whole new ball game,” he said. “It opens a new imaginative area to imagine the future, because in the past I was stuck in a boundary that made me tired.” The mass resignations came shortly after the beginning of an unprecedented one-year extension of the four-year legislative term. That followed a postponement of Legislative Council elections, with authorities citing public safety issues due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Most pro-democracy legislators criticized
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