HSBC won a legal bid yesterday to have members of the Occupy Hong Kong movement evicted from the open-air plaza beneath the bank’s Asian headquarters, bringing an end to one of the longest-running Occupy demonstrations.
The Hong Kong protests, sparked by the Occupy Wall Street movement that targeted US financial policies blamed for the income gap between rich and poor, spanned a period of growing resentment in the territory of 7 million people against perceived cozy ties between the government and big business.
INEQUALITY
The movement’s aim to draw worldwide attention to income inequality also touched a nerve in the former British colony, which has one of the biggest income gaps in Asia and property prices among the highest in the world.
Yesterday’s order came more than nine months after protesters pitched tents in the heart of Hong Kong’s financial district, home to global banks such as Standard Chartered, Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan.
DEFIANT
The protesters, who have been given until Aug. 27 to vacate the site, remained defiant.
“We won’t leave even if they [come] here to remove us and we’ll hold a meeting tomorrow night to discuss how we’ll deal with the eviction,” said Leung Wing Lai, one of the core members of the Occupy Hong Kong movement.
HSBC said it sought legal action after attempts to get the protesters to leave voluntarily failed.
PETERING OUT
The Hong Kong movement attracted students, young professionals, activists, the unemployed and the homeless, as well as victims of the Lehman mini-bond scandal who faced massive losses when the New York-based investment bank filed for bankruptcy in 2008.
The plaza was home to about 100 protesters at the peak of the movement, said spokesperson Tiv Wong, although only about 10 activists remained now.
BLOODSHED: North Koreans take extreme measures to avoid being taken prisoner and sometimes execute their own forces, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Saturday said that Russian and North Korean forces sustained heavy losses in fighting in Russia’s southern Kursk region. Ukrainian and Western assessments say that about 11,000 North Korean troops are deployed in the Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces occupy swathes of territory after staging a mass cross-border incursion in August last year. In his nightly video address, Zelenskiy quoted a report from Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi as saying that the battles had taken place near the village of Makhnovka, not far from the Ukrainian border. “In battles yesterday and today near just one village, Makhnovka,
US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen on Monday met virtually with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng (何立峰) and raised concerns about “malicious cyber activity” carried out by Chinese state-sponsored actors, the US Department of the Treasury said in a statement. The department last month reported that an unspecified number of its computers had been compromised by Chinese hackers in what it called a “major incident” following a breach at contractor BeyondTrust, which provides cybersecurity services. US Congressional aides said no date had been set yet for a requested briefing on the breach, the latest in a serious of cyberattacks
Some things might go without saying, but just in case... Belgium’s food agency issued a public health warning as the festive season wrapped up on Tuesday: Do not eat your Christmas tree. The unusual message came after the city of Ghent, an environmentalist stronghold in the country’s East Flanders region, raised eyebrows by posting tips for recycling the conifers on the dinner table. Pointing with enthusiasm to examples from Scandinavia, the town Web site suggested needles could be stripped, blanched and dried — for use in making flavored butter, for instance. Asked what they thought of the idea, the reply
In the East Room of the White House on a particularly frigid Saturday afternoon, US President Joe Biden bestowed the Presidential Medal of Freedom to 19 of the most famous names in politics, sports, entertainment, civil rights, LGBTQ+ advocacy and science. Former US secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton aroused a standing ovation from the crowd as she received her medal. Clinton was accompanied to the event by her husband, former US president Bill Clinton, daughter, Chelsea Clinton, and grandchildren. Democratic philanthropist George Soros and actor-director Denzel Washington were also awarded the nation’s highest civilian honor in a White House
RSS