●Dozens of Ethnic Tibetan students staged a candle-lit vigil inside the Central University for Nationalities in Beijing on Monday, saying it was to pray for the dead. Police kept reporters well away from the peaceful protest.
● Washington said on Monday that it would increase radio broadcasts to Tibet via Voice of America and Radio Free Asia as China clamped down on media coverage.
● Italian media on Monday questioned Pope Benedict's silence and speculated that the pontiff did not want to antagonize Beijing.
● UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Monday called on China to show restraint in handling protests and urged all concerned "to avoid further confrontation and violence."
● But the UN Security Council will likely keep silent about China's crackdown on demonstrations in Tibet, mostly because of the belief that provoking Beijing would accomplish nothing, diplomats said on Monday.
● German police detained 26 Tibetan demonstrators on Monday after they tried to force their way into the Chinese Consulate in Munich.
● Around 200 protesters threw eggs, tomatoes and sticks at the Chinese embassy in London on Monday.
● Some 300 protesters rallied on Monday outside the Chinese consulate in Barcelona, Spain, to denounce Beijing's crackdown.
● A protester who tried to drape the Tibetan flag over the Yahoo billboard in Times Square in New York was arrested.
● In Switzerland, some 400 people protested yesterday, demanding the International Olympic Committee (IOC) intervene. They chanted a prayer and waved Tibetan flags and banners as they marched through Lausanne toward IOC headquarters.
● The IOC said on Monday that it hoped the unrest in Tibet would not prevent the Olympic torch from making its trek through China.
● Tibetan activists sent a letter to the IOC yesterday demanding that the Tibetan region and Qinghai, Sichuan and Gansu provinces be excluded from the torch relay.
● The Swiss Olympic Committee on Monday urged the IOC to release a statement and urged IOC head Jacques Rogge to remind China of the world's expectations on human rights and civil liberties.
● John Kenwood, a 19-year-old tourist from Victoria, Canada, said before leaving Lhasa that he saw street cleaners wearing orange vests emblazoned with the Beijing Olympics symbol.
DISCONTENT: The CCP finds positive content about the lives of the Chinese living in Taiwan threatening, as such video could upset people in China, an expert said Chinese spouses of Taiwanese who make videos about their lives in Taiwan have been facing online threats from people in China, a source said yesterday. Some young Chinese spouses of Taiwanese make videos about their lives in Taiwan, often speaking favorably about their living conditions in the nation compared with those in China, the source said. However, the videos have caught the attention of Chinese officials, causing the spouses to come under attack by Beijing’s cyberarmy, they said. “People have been messing with the YouTube channels of these Chinese spouses and have been harassing their family members back in China,”
The Central Weather Administration (CWA) yesterday said there are four weather systems in the western Pacific, with one likely to strengthen into a tropical storm and pose a threat to Taiwan. The nascent tropical storm would be named Usagi and would be the fourth storm in the western Pacific at the moment, along with Typhoon Yinxing and tropical storms Toraji and Manyi, the CWA said. It would be the first time that four tropical cyclones exist simultaneously in November, it added. Records from the meteorology agency showed that three tropical cyclones existed concurrently in January in 1968, 1991 and 1992.
GEOPOLITICAL CONCERNS: Foreign companies such as Nissan, Volkswagen and Konica Minolta have pulled back their operations in China this year Foreign companies pulled more money from China last quarter, a sign that some investors are still pessimistic even as Beijing rolls out stimulus measures aimed at stabilizing growth. China’s direct investment liabilities in its balance of payments dropped US$8.1 billion in the third quarter, data released by the Chinese State Administration of Foreign Exchange showed on Friday. The gauge, which measures foreign direct investment (FDI) in China, was down almost US$13 billion for the first nine months of the year. Foreign investment into China has slumped in the past three years after hitting a record in 2021, a casualty of geopolitical tensions,
‘SOMETHING SPECIAL’: Donald Trump vowed to reward his supporters, while President William Lai said he was confident the Taiwan-US partnership would continue Donald Trump was elected the 47th president of the US early yesterday morning, an extraordinary comeback for a former president who was convicted of felony charges and survived two assassination attempts. With a win in Wisconsin, Trump cleared the 270 electoral votes needed to clinch the presidency. As of press time last night, The Associated Press had Trump on 277 electoral college votes to 224 for US Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic Party’s nominee, with Alaska, Arizona, Maine, Michigan and Nevada yet to finalize results. He had 71,289,216 votes nationwide, or 51 percent, while Harris had 66,360,324 (47.5 percent). “We’ve been through so
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