Senior advisers to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government on Saturday said that it was too early to lift the lockdown, just two days before the UK is to further relax COVID-19 restrictions. As people reveled in soaring temperatures by flocking to beaches and parks, several members of the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) told ministers that they risked a second wave of infection. One — epidemiologist John Edmunds — said the move was “a political decision.” Another prominent scientist, Sir Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust and also a member of SAGE, warned explicitly on Twitter that the government was wrong on its timing. “Covid-19 spreading too fast to lift lockdown in England,” Farrar wrote. “TTI [test, trace and isolate] has to be in place, fully working, capable [of] dealing [with] any surge immediately, locally responsive, rapid results & infection rates have to be lower.” From today, the British government is to begin easing lockdown rules imposed in March and partially reopen schools in England and allow up to six people from different households to meet outside. Reacting to the warnings, British Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Oliver Dowden said it was “absolutely right to urge caution.” However, he said that “the government scientific advisory group consists of more than 50 scientists, all of whom will have their different perspectives ... the government takes a collective view on the entire advice from SAGE.” Deputy chief medical officer Jonathan Van-Tam, speaking alongside Dowden at the government’s daily coronavirus briefing, added that SAGE had a “high degree of confidence” that continued social distancing and other measures combined with effective contact tracing would not push the so-called R transmission rate up above the critical one figure. Put simply, the R number is the calculation of how many people an infected person is thought to
DISAGREEMENT: The Brazilian president has clashed with governors over quarantine orders, while Europe and some US states moved toward reopening their economies
The number of COVID-19 cases worldwide yesterday topped 6 million, with Brazil registering another record surge in daily infections, as divisions deepened on how to deal with the pandemic. Latin American countries are bracing for difficult weeks ahead as the disease spreads rapidly across the region, even as much of the world exits lockdowns that have wrecked economies and stripped millions of their jobs. In Brazil — the epicenter of South America’s outbreak with nearly 500,000 confirmed cases, lagging behind only the US — disagreement among leaders over lockdown measures has hampered efforts to slow the virus as the number of fatalities in the country nears 30,000. Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who fears that the economic fallout from stay-at-home measures would be worse than the virus, has berated governors and mayors for imposing what he calls “the tyranny of total quarantine.” As the global death toll from the pandemic surpassed 369,000, US President Donald Trump’s decision to permanently cut funding to the WHO has been broadly criticized. The number of confirmed cases worldwide is more than 6 million, according to an Agence France-Presse tally. “Now is the time for enhanced cooperation and common solutions,” the EU said in a statement, adding: “Actions that weaken international results must be avoided.” German Minister of Health Jens Spahn said that the “disappointing” decision was a setback for global health. Richard Horton, editor of the Lancet medical journal, said it was “madness and terrifying both at the same time.” As the virus progresses at different speeds around the globe, there has been pressure in many countries to lift crippling lockdowns, despite experts’ warnings of a possible second wave of infections. India on Saturday said it would begin relaxing the world’s biggest lockdown in stages from early this month, even as it marked another record daily rise in infections. Iran meanwhile announced that collective prayers
In a cramped office in eastern Seoul, Hwang Seungwon pointed a remote control toward a huge NASA-like overhead screen stretching across one of the walls. With each flick of the control, a colorful array of pie charts, graphs and maps revealed the search habits of thousands of South Korean senior citizens being monitored by voice-enabled smart speakers, an experimental remote care service the company has said is increasingly needed during the COVID-19 pandemic. “We closely monitor for signs of danger, whether they are more frequently using search words that indicate rising states of loneliness or insecurity,” said Hwang, director of a social enterprise established by SK Telecom to handle the service. Trigger words lead to a recommendation for a visit by local public health officials. As South Korea’s government pushes to allow businesses to access vast amounts of personal information and to ease restrictions holding back telemedicine, tech firms could potentially find much bigger markets for their artificial intelligence (AI) and other emerging technologies. The drive, resisted for years by civil liberty advocates and medical professionals, has been reinvigorated by a technology-driven fight against COVID-19. It has so far allowed South Korea to emerge as something of a coronavirus success story, but also raised broader worries that privacy is being sacrificed for epidemiological gains. Armed with an infectious disease law that was strengthened after a 2015 outbreak of a different coronavirus, MERS, health authorities have aggressively used credit-card records, surveillance videos and cellphone data to find and isolate potential virus carriers. Locations where patients went before they were diagnosed are published on Web sites and released through cellphone alerts. Smartphone tracking apps are used to monitor about 30,000 individuals quarantined at home. Starting this month, entertainment venues would be required to register customers with smartphone QR codes so they could be easily located if needed. However, there is
HISTORIC FLIGHT: The astronauts named their capsule ‘Endeavour,’ after the space shuttle on which they both flew, while Elon Musk said he was overcome with emotion
Two veteran NASA astronauts headed for the International Space Station (ISS) yesterday after Elon Musk’s SpaceX on Saturday became the first commercial company to launch a rocket carrying humans into orbit, ushering in a new era in space travel. SpaceX’s two-stage Falcon 9 rocket with astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley aboard blasted off flawlessly in a cloud of bright orange flames and smoke from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, for a 19-hour voyage to the space station. “Let’s light this candle,” Hurley, the mission commander, told SpaceX mission control in Hawthorne, California, before liftoff at 3:22pm from NASA’s storied Launch Pad 39A. The SpaceX launch is the first of US astronauts from US soil since NASA’s space shuttle program ended in 2011 and the first crewed flight ever by a private company. “I’m really quite overcome with emotion,” SpaceX founder Musk said. “It’s been 18 years working towards this goal.” “This is hopefully the first step on a journey towards civilization on Mars,” he said. NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said it was a “great day” for NASA and SpaceX and an “important milestone for the nation.” “We’re not celebrating yet,” Bridenstine said. “We will celebrate when they’re home safely.” In a brief interview from space, Hurley said that in keeping with the tradition of having astronauts name their spacecraft, he and Behnken had named the Crew Dragon capsule Endeavour after the retired space shuttle on which they both flew. Behnken said the SpaceX capsule is a “lot different than its namesake” in that “it has touch display screens.” The mission, dubbed “Demo-2,” ends a government monopoly on space flight and is the final test flight before NASA certifies SpaceX’s capsule for regular crewed missions. Behnken, 49, and Hurley, 53, former military test pilots who joined NASA in 2000, were scheduled to dock with the ISS late last
POINT-BLANK RANGE: Reporters and camera people from several outlets say police officers in Minneapolis had fired tear gas and rubber bullets directly at them
Multiple journalists on the ground in Minnesota said they were teargassed and subject to other attacks by police on Saturday evening, a day after the widely condemned arrest of a CNN reporter live on air. Los Angeles Times journalist Molly Hennessy-Fiske, who was reporting outside the Fifth Precinct in Minneapolis, said she was with a group of about a dozen journalists when the Minnesota State Patrol “fired tear gas canisters on us at point blank range.” “I was saying: ‘Where do we go?’ They did not tell us where to go. They didn’t direct us. They just fired on us,” she said on video, adding that she was hit in the leg. She posted a video on Twitter from inside a building where she took shelter after police cornered her and others. She said the group clearly identified themselves as journalists. MSNBC journalist Ali Velshi said he was also hit in the leg by a rubber bullet, adding: “State police supported by National Guard fired unprovoked into an entirely peaceful rally.” Two member of a Reuters TV crew were hit by rubber bullets and injured when police moved into an area occupied by about 500 protesters in the southwest of the city shortly after the 8pm curfew. Footage taken by cameraman Julio-Cesar Chavez showed a police officer aiming directly at him as police fired rubber bullets and tear gas to disperse the crowd. “A police officer that I’m filming turns around, points his rubber-bullet rifle straight at me,” Chavez said. Minutes later, Chavez and Rodney Seward, Reuters security adviser, were struck by rubber bullets as they took cover at a nearby gas station. On footage captured as they ran for safety, several shots are heard ringing out and Seward yells: “I’ve been hit in the face by a rubber bullet.” Seward is seen in later footage being treated by a
For nearly a decade, the UN Security Council has been frequently paralyzed by Russia’s obstinacy over the Syrian crisis. Today, however, it is the US-China rivalry that has infected a growing array of issues, according to officials and diplomats. As recently as 2017, an understanding between Washington and Beijing allowed the UN on three occasions — involving separate sets of economic sanctions — to project international unity in the face of the North Korean nuclear threat. Three years later, the COVID-19 pandemic has seen a ferocious competition erupt between the UN’s two main contributors, prompting UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on May 1 to bemoan a “lack of leadership” during the world’s worst crisis since 1945. “Where we see power, we sometimes do not see the necessary leadership,” he said. Even after more than two months of negotiations, the 15 Security Council members were unable to reach agreement on a resolution supporting a call from the UN secretary-general for a global ceasefire while the world battles the novel coronavirus. The sole reason? US-Chinese differences over a passing mention in the draft resolution to the WHO, with which US President Donald Trump on Friday said he planned to sever ties. UN officials and diplomats say the US-Chinese conflict seems to be spreading, leaving them increasingly pessimistic. “The Security Council has been frozen for 45 years between 1945 and 1990, because of the Cold War,” one ambassador said, speaking on condition of anonymity. “The last thing we need is another Cold War that would freeze again the Security Council.” “Importing bilateral disputes in the council would be a disaster,” he said. Another ambassador added: “We really shouldn’t enter in a new Cold War, but it doesn’t look very good at the moment,” whether regarding leadership, the pandemic or US-Chinese relations, three subjects “very closely tied to each other.” At the UN,
Russian oil giant Rosneft, run by a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, is wielding growing influence over the nation’s remaining independent media outlets, already squeezed by tightening press freedoms and pressure from the Kremlin. Now, reporters at the country’s top liberal business daily Vedomosti — shaken in March by an announcement from owner Demyan Kudryavtsev that he planned to sell the newspaper — have denounced censorship under its new acting editor-in-chief, Andrei Shmarov, who was appointed in late March, ahead of the sale’s completion. Journalists say they were barred from covering negative opinion polls of Putin, and that editors interfered in coverage of Rosneft. On Friday, the new owner was announced as the head of a little-known regional news agency called FederalPress, Ivan Yeryomin. An investigation last month by several Russian news outlets, including Vedomosti, revealed that Rosneft leveraged control over the paper through debts owed by Kudryavtsev to the oil giant’s bank. Kudryavtsev denied these allegations; Rosneft has not reacted. “The real owner is Rosneft through a chain of debt,” said Vedomosti editor-at-large Maxim Trudolyubov, who has worked at the paper since it started in 1999. He said the new editor-in-chief was “selected to run the newspaper favorably to the new owner… They just wanted to silence it.” He described Rosneft chief executive Igor Sechin as “some sort of a hitman” employing aggressive tactics.” “He plays a complicated game of takeovers to build his empire at the expense of other oligarchs. It’s about assets, money, influence,” Trudolyubov said. The newspaper wrote in a recent editorial: “Vedomosti will just become another dependent and controlled media outlet.” On Friday, the paper wrote that the change of ownership deal undoubtedly had “not only commercial aims.” Its editorial suggested that “unnamed figures who really stand behind the official buyers ... see the publication as an instrument of influence, not a business.” “This is
INDIA Pride to be preserved The nation would not let its “pride be hurt” in its latest border flare-ups with China, but is determined to settle the dispute through talks, Minister of Defense Rajnath Singh said in a television interview late on Saturday. “Situations arise with China. It has happened before,” Singh said, adding that the government was striving to make sure “tension does not escalate.” The government has turned down US President Donald Trump’s offer to mediate, he said. IRAN Speaker says talks futile Newly elected Parliament Speaker Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf yesterday said that any negotiations with the US would be “futile.” The nation’s new parliament “considers negotiations with and appeasement of America, as the axis of global arrogance, to be futile and harmful,” he said in a televised address in which he also vowed to avenge the death of a top Iranian general in a US drone attack in January. The former commander of the Revolutionary Guards’ air force was elected speaker on Thursday. UNITED KINGDOM Amazon removes images An Amazon.com spokeswoman yesterday said the firm was removing certain images after messages using extremely strong racist abuse appeared on some listings on its local Web site when users searched for Apple’s AirPods and similar products. The message sparked outrage on Twitter. “We are removing the images in question and have taken action on the bad actor,” the spokeswoman said, without elaborating on the “bad actor.” BULGARIA Minister held in trash probe Deputy Minister of the Environment and Water Krassimir Zhivkov has been arrested and charged for his alleged role in illegally importing harmful waste from Italy and burning it, prosecutors said on Saturday. Zhivkov “pressured his subordinates to authorize the illegal trafficking of waste,” they said, adding that they had asked for him to be held in custody. Authorities in the two nations have been investigating
‘RIGHT WAY’: Tamika Palmer said that the last thing her daughter would want is more violence and called on people to demand justice, but without causing harm
Looking to defuse anger after gunfire wounded at least seven people at a protest in Louisville, the mother of a woman killed by police on Friday urged protesters to continue demanding justice, but do so “without hurting each other.” Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear read the statement from Breonna Taylor’s mother hours after gunshots erupted during protests late on Thursday outside City Hall. One person was in a critical condition, Louisville Metro Police said on Friday. Police officers fired no shots, Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer said, adding that they provided aid to those who were wounded. TV video showed protesters fleeing as gunfire erupted. With more rallies planned, Taylor’s mother joined the chorus of calls for protests to remain peaceful. In her statement, Tamika Palmer said that her daughter — an emergency medical technician — devoted her life to others and the “last thing she’d want right now is any more violence.” “Please keep saying her name,” her statement said. “Please keep demanding justice and accountability, but let’s do it the right way without hurting each other. We can and we will make some real change here. Now is the time. Let’s make it happen, but safely.” On Friday, what appeared to be several hundred people gathered downtown for the second night of protests. The crowd briefly blocked traffic near City Hall and chanted: “No justice, no peace.” Protesters carried signs calling for justice for Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, the man who died after a Minneapolis police officer pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck for several minutes even after he stopped moving and pleading for air. The police presence intensified at about 9:45pm on Friday, with officers in riot gear standing shoulder-to-shoulder and moving people down a key street near City Hall, the Courier Journal reported. A police officer was seen on camera during a WAVE-TV broadcast firing what appeared to
CLOSELY TRACKED: A US officer said that the warplanes were watched as they flew from Russia by way of Iran and Syria to Libya and were photographed multiple times
The US Africa Command flatly rejected Russian claims that Moscow did not deploy fighter jets to Libya, saying on Friday that the 14 aircraft flown in reflect Russia’s long-term goal to establish a foothold in the region that could threaten NATO allies. US Brigadier General Gregory Hadfield, deputy director of intelligence, said that the US tracked the MiG-29s and Su-24 fighter bombers flown in by Russian military, passing through Iran and Syria before landing at Libya’s al-Jufra air base. The base is the main forward airfield for Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar and his self-styled Libyan National Army, which has been waging an offensive to capture Tripoli. “If Russia secures a permanent position in Libya and, worse, deploys long-range missile systems, it will be a game changer for Europe, NATO and many Western nations,” Hadfield said. Russia’s interference in Libya gives it access to that country’s oil and a “military base strategically positioned in striking distance of Europe,” he said. Russia has denied links to the aircraft, calling the claim “stupidity.” Former commander of the Russian Air Force Viktor Bondarev, who heads the defense committee in the Russian Federal Assembly, said the planes are not Russian, but could be Soviet-era aircraft owned by other African nations. Hadfield disputed that, saying that there were none of those aircraft in that part of Africa. “Not only did we watch them fly from Russia by way of Iran and Syria to Libya, we were able to photograph them at multiple points,” he said. Libya was plunged into chaos when a NATO-backed uprising in 2011 toppled late Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi. The country is now split between a government in the east allied with Haftar and one in Tripoli, in the west, supported by the UN. Hadfield said the fighter aircraft would likely provide close air support and offensive strikes for the Wagner Group, a
Singapore’s otters, long adored by the city-state’s nature lovers, are popping up in unexpected places during the COVID-19 lockdown, but their antics have angered some and even sparked calls for a cull. With the streets empty, the creatures have been spotted hanging out by a shopping center, scampering through the lobby of a hospital and even feasting on pricey fish stolen from a pond. While many think of tiny Singapore as a densely populated concrete jungle, it is also relatively green for a busy Asian city, and has patches of rainforest, fairly clean waterways and abundant wildlife. There are estimated to be about 90 otters in Singapore, making up 10 families, and appearances at popular tourist sites around the downtown waterfront have transformed the animals into local celebrities. They featured in a documentary narrated by David Attenborough, are tracked avidly by the local media — and have been spotted more frequently since people were asked to stay home and workplaces closed last month to fight the virus. “When there’s restriction of movement, there’s less vehicles and there’s less people, so the urban space opens up,” said N. Sivasothi, a biologist at the National University of Singapore who is known as “Otterman” due to his work on the animals. However, their newfound freedoms appear to have emboldened the otters, and they are now facing a backlash. The most high-profile incident was a raid on a pond at a spa shuttered due to the pandemic. The creatures gobbled several fish, including an arowana, a prized species that can sell for tens of thousands of dollars. Actress-turned-entrepreneur Jazreel Low, who owns the spa, posted pictures on Facebook of fish parts scattered around the pond and lamented a “massacre.” “They probably realized that there was nobody there and became more daring,” Low told entertainment news Web site 8 DAYS. The case sparked a
US Senator Ted Cruz on Friday urged the US Department of the Treasury and the US Department of Justice to investigate whether Twitter, which is embroiled in a feud with the White House, is breaching US law by letting top Iranian officials use the social media platform. Cruz wrote a letter asking the departments to open an investigation into Twitter “for possible criminal violations” of US sanctions against Iran. Twitter might have broken the law by letting Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs Mohammad Javad Zarif tweet, despite their being blacklisted under Executive Order 13876, which bars providing goods or services to those targeted, Cruz said. Twitter declined comment on Cruz’s letter. The departments and the Iranian mission to the UN did not immediately reply to requests for comment. Cruz said that he raised the issue with Twitter in February, before the latest dust up between the company and US President Donald Trump. Twitter this week prompted readers to check the facts in Trump tweets about mail-in ballots and it hid a Trump tweet about Minnesota behind a banner saying that it breached its rules on glorifying violence. Cruz said that Twitter is not entitled to an exception under a treasury department general license allowing services to those blacklisted “solely” under another executive order, 13599, which targets the Iranian government. Washington-based sanctions lawyer Doug Jacobson said that Twitter “could take the legal position that the services they provide are exempt from the scope of sanctions on Iran by the long-standing Berman Amendment and the Free Trade in Ideas Act.” Jacobson referred to a law sponsored by former US representative Howard Berman to prevent regulation of the import or export of “informational materials.” However, he said that the treasury department’s General License D-1 “imposes certain limits on the provision of social media services in Iran.”
Thousands of Slovenians on bicycles on Friday blocked the center of the capital, Ljubljana, in a protest accusing the government of using the COVID-19 pandemic to increase police power and tighten control of some media. “Wake up” and “Slovenia is not Hungary,” read some of the banners carried by bikers shouting “thieves” in front of the EU country’s parliament. For the sixth week in a row, thousands of people in Ljubljana and other cities rode their bikes on Friday evening in support of the protest organized by civil society groups that also accuse the government of corruption. “The resignation of [Slovenian Prime Minister] Janez Jansa is only a first step,” Tjasa Prosek, one of the organizers, said, adding that the action would continue and gradually put forward more demands. The protest has been backed by political parties and intellectuals, including Slovenian poet Boris Novak, who on Friday told the crowd that they represented “the only hope for our country’s future.” “Freedom is currently at stake in Slovenia,” Novak said, adding that Jansa’s “ideal of democracy is that of [Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor] Orban’s Hungary or Poland.” Shortly after taking over the government in March, Jansa’s four-party coalition imposed strict measures in a bid to control the virus’ spread, including a two-month lockdown, closing the borders and banning travel.
INDIA Monkeys steal blood Monkeys mobbed a health worker and made off with blood samples that were to be tested for COVID-19. After making off with the three samples this week in Meerut, near the capital, New Delhi, the monkeys scampered up nearby trees and one then tried to chew its plunder. The sample boxes were later recovered and had not been damaged, Meerut Medical college superintendent Dheeraj Raj told reporters on Friday, after footage of the encounter went viral on social media. “They were still intact and we don’t think there is any risk of contamination or spread,” Raj said. The three people whose samples were stolen were retested for the virus, he said. AUSTRALIA Broom intruder cleared A knife-toting man hired to break into another man’s home, tie him up and stroke him with a broom has been cleared of intimidation after accidentally entering the wrong house. Sydney man Terrence Leroy and an associate turned up at a rural home on a Sunday morning in July last year armed and ready to carry out a sexual fantasy organized on Facebook. The unsuspecting resident initially mistook the intruders for a friend who had come over to make coffee and said: “Bugger off, it’s too early.” When the men said their intended role-player’s name, the startled resident turned on the light and found them holding large knives next to his bed. After realizing he was not the willing participant, one of the pair apologized and shook the man’s hand before leaving, according to court documents published earlier this month. During the trial Leroy’s lawyer argued that there was no intention to intimidate the stranger. “It was a commercial agreement to tie up and stroke a semi-naked man in his underpants with a broom,” the lawyer said. After excusing themselves, the pair — along with a
DOUBLE TROUBLE: Former and current cancer patients are much more likely to die from COVID-19, according to two studies, one of which found a death rate of 28%
New research shows how dangerous the novel coronavirus is for current and former cancer patients: Those who developed COVID-19 were much more likely to die within a month than people without cancer who got it, two studies found. They are the largest reports on people with both diseases in the US, the UK, Spain and Canada. In one study, half of 928 current and former cancer patients with COVID-19 were hospitalized and 13 percent died. That was far more than the various rates that have been reported in the general population. The results were published on Thursday in the journal Lancet and would be discussed this weekend at an American Society of Clinical Oncology conference being held online because of the COVID-19 pandemic. A second study in the Lancet from researchers in England of 800 patients with various types of cancer and COVID-19 found an even higher death rate — 28 percent. The risk rose with age and other health problems, such as high blood pressure. The studies have big implications: More than 1.6 million new cancers are diagnosed in the US each year, several million Americans are in treatment now and about 20 million are cancer survivors. Jeremy Warner, a Vanderbilt University data scientist who led the larger study, said that the results show the wisdom of measures that many hospitals have taken to delay or modify care for many cancer patients, and the need for people treated in the past to be extra careful now. “If they don’t have COVID-19, they want to do anything they can to avoid getting it,” Warner said. “The pandemic is posing incredible demands on the cancer care system” and the new studies show good reason for concern, said society president Howard Burris, who heads the Sarah Cannon Research Institute in Nashville, Tennessee. “We’re trying to minimize trips to the clinic”
Empty offices and restaurants in the city of Sydney are driving hungry rats into homes and suburbs, and the loosening of restrictions could create “a new rat plague,” a leading rat catcher said. As city centers have closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, suburban rat infestations have spiked, said Geoff Milton, a Sydney rat catcher with 35 years of experience. Rats naturally seek out houses in winter, and the sudden drop-off in food and garbage in cities is exacerbating the problem. Calls about suburban rats have risen 30 percent from the same time last year, Milton told reporters. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has also warned that New York rats had become more “unusual or aggressive,” and have begun eating each other due to a lack of food. University of Sydney rodent expert Peter Banks said that the same thing had already happened in Australia. Cannibalism would have happened “within days” of restrictions being enacted, as city-dwelling rats ran out of food, he said. “We locked down and stopped using the city and closed restaurants quite rapidly, and that was quite long ago,” Banks told reporters. “The rats have to eat immediately, so this would have happened days after, because the rats are so food stressed.” “They are so dependent on our garbage and our spilt food. The rats we have in the center of Sydney are the same species as in New York,” he said. “They are wholly dependent on us. If they produce babies they can’t support, they kill them. Or one of their relatives comes in and kills them.” “They will eat other rats that die, for sure. It’s hard to say whether they will go and kill another rat. They will not let a meal of another rat go by,” he added. Milton said that this had driven rats into new areas. “They
Indonesian officials are forcing people who break social distancing rules to recite Koran verses, stay in “haunted” houses and submit to public shaming on social media as the country battles to contain surging novel coronavirus infections. The Southeast Asian archipelago began deploying about 340,000 troops across two dozen cities to oversee enforcement of measures aimed at halting transmission of the disease, such as wearing masks in public. However, provincial leaders are buttressing these efforts with their own zealous campaigns to fight the coronavirus. Police in western Bengkulu Province have assembled a 40-person squad to find lockdown scofflaws and force them to wear placards with promises to wear masks and keep their distance from others. Pictures of the perpetrators are then uploaded to social media for maximum shaming effect, one official said. “People in Bengkulu still aren’t aware of the importance of following the rules, especially when it comes to wearing masks and not gathering” in big groups, said Martinah, head of Bengkulu’s public order agency, who goes by one name. “This is for the sake of themselves and their families,” he added. Some of those singled out by police have bristled at the punishment, including fisherman Firmansyah, who was punished for failing to abide by the mask rule while alone on his boat. “It’s silly to wear a mask when I’m out at sea,” he said, after he was nabbed returning to shore. “There’s no regulation to wear a mask in the water. If there was I’d comply with it.” Farther north in conservative Aceh Province, those flouting public health regulations have been forced to atone by reading passages from the Koran. The area’s tiny non-Muslim minority are spared from the punishment. “If we find them not wearing masks they’ll just be reprimanded,” local government spokeswoman Agusliayana Devita said. The capital, Jakarta, this month announced new rules that could
TWO SIDES: A Chinese official said the legislation was in line with the interests of ‘all Chinese,’ while a HK lawmaker said it would end human rights and democracy
China yesterday faced growing international pressure over its move to impose security legislation on Hong Kong that critics say will destroy the territory’s autonomy, with the US and Britain placing the issue before the UN Security Council. The US, Britain, Canada and Australia led criticism of the bill, which would punish secession, subversion of state power, terrorism and acts that endanger national security, as well as allow Chinese security agencies to operate openly in Hong Kong. China’s National People’s Congress (NPC) on Thursday approved the plans for the legislation, which followed seven months of pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong last year. After China fended off initial US efforts this week to have the controversy put on the agenda of the UN Security Council, the US and Britain succeeded in securing an informal discussion about it, diplomatic sources told reporters. Beijing’s proposed security law “lies in direct conflict” with China’s international obligations to guarantee certain freedoms in Hong Kong, the two countries said in a joint statement with Canada and Australia on Thursday. “The proposed law would undermine the one country, two systems framework,” they said, referring to Hong Kong’s special status within China under the terms of its handover from Britain in 1997. British Secretary of Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs Dominic Raab said that the UK would widen its rules around the rights of British National (Overseas) passport holders — a status offered to many Hong Kongers at the time of handover — if China went ahead with the legislation. The Chinese vote came just hours after Washington revoked the special status conferred on Hong Kong, paving the way for the territory to be stripped of trading and economic privileges. US President Donald Trump said he was to hold a news conference yesterday about China. “We’ll be announcing tomorrow [yesterday] what we’re doing with respect to China,” Trump told
NUCLEAR FUNDING: The charge sheet says bank officials set up branches in countries including Thailand, Russia and Kuwait and used front companies to process payments
The US Department of Justice has accused a network of North Korean and Chinese citizens of secretly advancing North Korea’s nuclear weapons program by channeling at least US$2.5 billion in illicit payments through hundreds of front companies. The indictment, unsealed on Thursday in Washington’s federal court, is believed to be the largest criminal enforcement action ever brought against North Korea. The 33 defendants include executives of North Korea’s state-owned Foreign Trade Bank, which in 2013 was added to a US Department of the Treasury list of sanctioned institutions for transactions that facilitated the nuclear proliferation network and cut off from the US financial system. According to the indictment, the bank officials — one of whom had served in North Korea’s primary intelligence bureau — set up branches in countries around the world, including Thailand, Russia and Kuwait, and used more than 250 front companies to process US dollar payments to further the country’s nuclear proliferation program. The defendants used a variety of tactics to cover their tracks, including coded conversations; listing false destinations and customers on contracts and invoices; and creating new front companies after the banks caught onto the association with North Korea, the indictment says. Banks were routinely tricked into processing transactions that they would not have ordinarily done, prosecutors said. Five of the defendants are Chinese citizens who operated covert branches in either China or Libya. Others who were charged include individuals who served at times as the bank’s president or vice president. “Through this indictment, the United States has signified its commitment to hampering North Korea’s ability to illegally access the US financial system and [to limiting] its ability to use proceeds from illicit actions to enhance its illegal WMD [weapons of mass destruction] and ballistic missile programs,” Acting US Attorney for the District of Columbia Michael Sherwin said in a statement. The US
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