Nguyen Ngoc Nhu Quynh, whose pen name derives from her daughter’s nickname “mushroom”, was arrested in October 2016 and later charged with anti-state propaganda over critical Facebook posts about politics and the environment.

Vietnam’s one-party state keeps a tight clamp on dissent and routinely jails activists, bloggers and lawyers who speak out against the communist regime.

The 37-year-old blogger faced a maximum of 12 years in prison, and her lawyer said the heavy sentence she received at the closed-door trial was “harsh”.

“I am not happy with the result of the trial today,” Nguyen Kha Thanh told AFP, adding that Quynh would likely appeal.

AFP was barred from attending the one-day trial in south-central Khanh Hoa province Thursday, which was heavily guarded by police, according to images on social media.

Thanh said Quynh was calm throughout the trial. In a pre-sentence statement she admitted no guilt and instead used the opportunity to send a message to her two kids and mother, the lawyer added.

“She apologised to her mother and the two kids for what effect this has had on them, but she said they must be very proud of her,” Thanh told AFP.

– Woman of Courage award –

==========================

Quynh was charged under Article 88 of Vietnam’s criminal code and held incommunicado with no access to lawyers until June 20, according to Thanh.

She has been a vocal critic of Vietnam’s human rights record, civilian deaths in police custody and the government’s handling of a toxic leak that killed tonnes of fish last year.

She was arrested in Nha Trang on October 10 as she was visiting a fellow activist in prison.

In the verdict, the judge said Quynh had defamed the government, harmed national unity, eroded popular trust of the government and undermined national security.

She was also convicted for publishing inaccurate information to humiliate the police and erode public trust in them, based on her reports about police brutality.

Human Rights Watch earlier decried the trial as “outrageous” and demanded her release.

“The scandal here is not what Mother Mushroom said, but Hanoi’s stubborn refusal to repeal draconian, rights-abusing laws that punish peaceful dissent and tarnish Vietnam’s international reputation,” Phil Robertson, HRW deputy Asia director said in a statement Wednesday.

The United States, Britain and the European Union have all called for Quynh’s release.

Vietnam’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Le Thi Thu Hang said Thursday “all acts that violate the law will be seriously punished in accordance with Vietnamese laws” when asked about the case.

Quynh received an International Woman of Courage Award from the US State Department in March, which Vietnam said was “not appropriate and of no benefit for the development of relations between the two countries”.

In 2015, she was awarded the Civil Rights Defender of the Year by a Sweden-based international advocacy group.

Brussels will give 10.8 million euros ($12 million) to 14 EU countries to boost their cyber response teams following this week’s massive global cyberattack, Security Commissioner Julian King said.

“We’re living through an attack right now. That attack, the recent WannaCry attack and other recent attacks serve graphically to illustrate that the cyber threats we face are growing very seriously” King told reporters.

“Our current dependence on the internet and connected devices and technology is at the moment currently greater than our ability to protect ourselves, and we need to do something about that,” King said.

The latest series of cyberattacks began in Ukraine on Tuesday, hitting government and corporate computer systems across the world as the so-called Petya virus spread to western Europe and across the Atlantic.

The British commissioner to the European Union said that cyberattacks were becoming “more strategic because they endanger critical infrastructure and indeed our democratic processes.”

In addition the extra funding for national cyber response centres, he said there should also be extra support for the EU police agency Europol’s cybercrime department.

Europol said Wednesday that the latest cyberattacks were similar to last month’s WannaCry ransomware havoc but “more sophisticated”.

Nato warned on Wednesday that cyberattacks could potentially trigger the 29-nation military alliance’s mutual defence guarantee, while making a similar call to strengthen cyber defences.

Japanese firm FutureLeap claims it has just the thing for in-the-mood couch potatoes with a virtual reality system so realistic you’d swear that cyber date just whispered sweet nothings in your ear.

The company showed off its high-tech romance gear at the three-day Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality exhibition in Tokyo.

At FutureLeap’s booth, a young model kneels on a fluffy carpet as she tosses balloons in the air, blows bubbles and flirts with a man wearing VR headgear who is sitting some two metres (6.5 feet) away.

He reaches out to touch her shoulder and gets nothing but air. When she whispers into the device though, he can feel the sensation of her breath on his ear.

Most virtual reality romance games feature an animated companion rather than a real person, said company employee Tomoyuki Takahashi.

But in this case, “you feel the real sensation as if you were together alone with a woman who is just your type,” he said.

“This type of realistic sensation will become the main trend in virtual reality technology.”

Other companies have even moved away from offerings that require a VR headset.

LiveCartoon CEO Shohei Tsuji, covered head to toe in motion sensors, demonstrated the company’s newest product by showing off his best dance moves while a pretty female anime character mimicked his steps on screen.

The system, Tsuji said, could be used by retailers who want to interact with customers by having the cutesy character engage passersby while the person who controls the character remains out of sight.

“With this system you can have animated characters talking directly to customers,” he said.

Dr Wee said on Thursday that the decision was made to address the shortage of raw materials faced by the Malaysian furniture industry.

He added that the decision was made by the Cabinet before Hari Raya following complaints from the furniture industry and exporters.

Dr Wee said this in a press conference after attending the Permas state seat Hari Raya open house hosted by Johor Mentri Besar Datuk Seri Mohamed Khaled Nordin.

He said that the shortage of raw materials was highlighted during a meeting with the Muar Furniture Association and Malaysia Furniture Council recently as one of the two main factors affecting the furniture industry.

He said some RM200mil to RM300mil of raw rubberwood is exported yearly to countries such as Vietnam and China, adding that this was hurting the Malaysian furniture industry.

“We sell the raw materials to other countries to process and sell back to us. So by keeping the raw materials in our country, we are able to add value to our industry, address the shortage and create more opportunities,” he said.

The three-day visit is Xi’s first since becoming leader in 2013 and comes at a time when there are growing fears that Beijing is threatening semi-autonomous Hong Kong’s freedoms.

High-profile pro-democracy campaigners including Joshua Wong and young legislator Nathan Law were arrested Wednesday night for causing “public nuisance” after staging a protest outside the convention centre that will host some of the anniversary events, a stone’s throw away from the hotel where Xi will be staying.

More than 20 activists remained in custody Thursday morning as supporters gathered at the police station where they were being held.

“They want to prevent people like Joshua Wong and Nathan Law from going onto the streets,” said fellow activist Derek Lam who was among supporters waiting outside.

The area around the convention centre has been cordoned off by giant water-filled barricades and police have said they are taking “counter terrorism security measures” to ensure Xi’s safety.

Animosity towards Beijing has grown in recent years, particularly among young people.

The failure of mass rallies in 2014 to win democratic reform has sparked a new wave of “localist” activists, keen to emphasise Hong Kong’s own identity, with some calling for a full split from the mainland.

Since the return to China in 1997, the city has been governed under a “one country, two systems” deal that gives it rights unseen on the mainland, including freedom of speech and an independent judiciary.

But there are now concerns Beijing is trampling the agreement by interfering in a range of areas, from politics to education and media.

Chinese authorities and local officials insist Hong Kong’s semi-autonomous status is intact, but have railed against calls for self-determination or independence.

Party atmosphere

Although young activists have promised to continue protesting during Xi’s visit, other residents said they would celebrate his trip to Hong Kong.

Stages were set up in squares opposite the convention centre for music and dancing with excited crowds gathering ahead of his arrival.

“It should be an honour to get the number one person in China to come to a very small city,” said one 38-year-old man at the gathering who gave his name as Mr Fan.

“He’s offered three days to Hong Kong — it’s a luxury,” he added, saying that things were better in the city than under British rule.

Xi’s visit will culminate in the inauguration of new city leader Carrie Lam, who was appointed by a pro-China committee.

She has promised to heal divisions but has already alarmed critics by saying children should be instilled with Chinese identity from a young age and suggesting that independence activists could face punishment under the law.

A Beijing-backed framework for what would have been the city’s first public leadership election sparked the protests of 2014 after it said candidates must be vetted.

Since then, the debate on promised democratic reforms has stalled with Lam saying she is unsure the time is right to revisit it.

Lam has said she wants to focus on livelihood issues instead, in a city where the wealth gap is at a record high and many cannot afford decent housing, fuelling tensions.

Xi is due to fly out of Hong Kong on Saturday, after Lam’s inauguration.

Nguyen Ngoc Nhu Quynh, whose penname derives from her daughter’s nickname “mushroom”, was arrested in October 2016 for critical Facebook posts about politics and the environment.

Vietnam’s one-party state keeps a tight clamp on dissent and routinely jails activists, bloggers and lawyers who speak out against the communist regime.

A court clerk confirmed Quynh’s trial started Thursday morning, speaking to AFP on condition of anonymity.

Quynh’s mother, who was allowed to briefly see her daughter Wednesday for the first time since she was detained, said she has little hope for a verdict of not guilty.

“My daughter has done nothing wrong, but they have been so brutal and repressive,” Nguyen Thi Tuyet Lan said.

AFP was banned from attending the trial in the south-central province of Khanh Hoa, and photos on Facebook showed the courthouse heavily guarded by police.

Quynh was a vocal critic of Vietnam’s human rights record, civilian deaths in police custody and the government’s handling of a toxic leak that killed tonnes of fish last year.

She was arrested in Nha Trang on October 10 as she was visiting a fellow activist in prison.

She was charged under Article 88 of Vietnam’s criminal code and held incommunicado with no access to lawyers until June 20, according to her attorney Nguyen Kha Thanh.

New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) urged authorities to release the 37-year-old blogger this week, calling the trial “outrageous”.

“The scandal here is not what Mother Mushroom said, but Hanoi’s stubborn refusal to repeal draconian, rights-abusing laws that punish peaceful dissent and tarnish Vietnam’s international reputation,” Phil Robertson, HRW deputy Asia director said in a statement Wednesday.

The United States, Britain and the European Union have all called for Quynh’s release.

She received an International Woman of Courage Award from the US State Department in March, which Vietnam said was “not appropriate and of no benefit for the development of relations between the two countries”.

In 2015, Quynh was awarded the Civil Rights Defender of the Year by a Sweden-based international advocacy group.

The office of Switzerland’s attorney general (OAG) confirmed that three people were arrested in the western canton of Vaud last Friday and Saturday, suspected of violating “the prohibition of groups like Al-Qaeda, Islamic State and similar organisations.”

They were also suspected of participating in a “criminal organisation”, it said.

A fourth man — reportedly a taxi driver suspected of being an Islamic State recruiter — was arrested in Geneva on June 14. There was no apparent link with the other three, according to the OAG.

Swiss authorities have not revealed the identities or the nationalities of those arrested.

In the most dramatic case, police swooped on a car outside a busy mall in Aubonne, Vaud on Saturday, in what one onlooker said looked like a scene straight out of an “American movie”.

“It was surreal,” the witness told the 20 Minutes daily, describing how heavily-armed police had blindfolded and taken the driver away.

Other witnesses told the paper that police had also taken away his passenger, a woman wearing a headscarf and with a child on her lap.

But the OAG stressed Wednesday that all of those arrested were men, without explaining how the woman in the car figured in the case.

It also denied reports that those arrested had been in possession of explosives, insisting in a statement that “no traces of explosives have been found until now.”

OAG information chief Andre Marty did however tell the Le Temps daily that the Aubonne arrests were made because it was believed the suspects “might pose an immediate danger.”

Police had first arrested another person in Vaud on Friday, and Marty said investigators were now seeking to determine the connection between the three.

The man arrested in Geneva earlier this month was  not believed to have any connection with those arrested in Vaud, he said, insisting it would be “a complete exaggeration to talk about the dismantlement of a terrorist network.”

Swiss authorities are currently investigating some 60 cases linked to suspected jihadist terrorism, the OAG said, stressing that most of those cases revolve around the spread of jihadist propaganda over the internet.

“Nothing justifies alarmism,” it said.

Prosecutors said there was “sufficient evidence to charge six individuals with criminal offences” including manslaughter by negligence, perverting the course of justice and misconduct in public office.

Barry Devonside, whose 18-year-old son Christopher died in the tragedy, was with other relatives when the charges were announced.

“Everybody applauded when it was announced that the most senior police officer on that particular day will have charges presented to him,” he said.

Former South Yorkshire Police (SYP) officer David Duckenfield, who was the match commander on the day of the crush, was charged with “manslaughter by gross negligence.”

“We will allege that David Duckenfield’s failures to discharge his personal responsibility were extraordinarily bad and contributed substantially to the deaths of each of those 96 people who so tragically and unnecessarily lost their lives,” said the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS).

It said he could not be charged with the manslaughter of Tony Bland — the 96th casualty — as he died almost four years later.

Former officer Norman Bettison was charged with four offences of misconduct in public office relating to “telling alleged lies about his involvement in the aftermath of Hillsborough and the culpability of fans.”

Prime Minister Theresa May welcomed the charging decision but told parliament it would “be a day of mixed emotions” for the families.

“I think that is an important step forward,” she said.

No charges for ambulance services

Other officers Donald Denton and Alan Foster, along with SYP solicitor Peter Metcalf, were charged with intending “to pervert the course of public justice” by allegedly attempting to cover-up the police’s culpability in the crush at the FA Cup semi-final.

Graham Mackrell, former secretary at Sheffield Wednesday Football Club, whose Hillsborough ground hosted the match, faces three charges over safety failings at the stadium.

Two investigations into the disaster produced files on 23 suspects for prosecutors to consider criminal charges.

The disaster occurred on April 15, 1989 during an FA Cup semi-final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest, in Sheffield, northern England.

Following the publication of a report by the Hillsborough Independent Panel in 2012, which concluded that police had sought to cover up their failings, two separate probes were launched.

Operation Resolve looked at the lead-up to the tragedy and the day of the match.

More than 170 allegations of police misconduct were probed by the investigations.

Assistant Commissioner Robert Beckley, who led Operation Resolve, said it had submitted files containing over 35 million words for consideration.

The CPS decided against charging six officers over their conduct in planning for the match due to lack of clarity of their roles, and also three ambulance service employees over the emergency response.

The CPS was “critical of the overall (emergency) response but is unable to quantify the effect that any failings had on the victims,” it said.

Sheffield Wednesday also escaped charges as “there are no longer any directors or other individuals who form the company and therefore no-one who could represent it in the dock, give instructions to answer any criminal charge or enter a plea.”

The defendants, except Duckenfield, will appear at Warrington Magistrates’ Court on August 8.////AFT

India’s shipping ministry said a private terminal run by Danish sea transport giant A.P. Moller-Maersk at the Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust (JNPT) in Mumbai had been affected.

Maersk earlier tweeted that the attack had impacted “multiple sites and business units”, without confirming which ones.

“It (JPNT) has been informed by the private terminal operator that this disruption is a consequence of a worldwide disruption being faced by them because of a cyberattack,” said the statement.

“While the terminal operator is taking steps to address the issues disrupting the operations, it is anticipated that there could be bunching of in-bound and out-bound container cargo,” it added.

The series of cyberattacks began in Russia and Ukraine on Tuesday, hitting government and corporate computer systems across the world as the virus spread to western Europe and across the Atlantic.

Several multinational companies said they were targeted, including US pharmaceutical giant Merck, Russian state oil giant Rosneft, British advertising giant WPP and the French industrial group Saint-Gobain.

The first reports of trouble came from Ukrainian banks, Kiev’s main airport and Rosneft, in a major incident reminiscent of the recent WannaCry virus.

Some IT experts identified the virus as “Petrwrap”, a modified version of the Petya ransomware which hit last year and demanded money from victims in exchange for the return of their data.

However global cybersecurity firm Kaspersky Lab said they thought it was not a variant of Petya ransomware “but a new ransomware that has not been seen before”.

India’s shipping ministry said it was “alive to the situation and are taking steps to ensure minimum disturbance to trade, transporters and more importantly local citizens”.

The cyberattacks recalled the WannaCry ransomware outbreak last month which hit more than 150 countries and a total of more than 200,000 victims.

The helicopter assault comes a day after Maduro announced the arrests of five opponents he accused of plotting against him to clear the way for a US invasion.

The beleaguered president, who for weeks has been thundering about alleged coup attempts against him, said the helicopter was flown by a pilot who worked for a former minister.

Around 15 shots were fired at the Interior Ministry, Maduro added.

“I have activated the entire armed forces to defend the peace,” he said in remarks from the Miraflores presidential palace.

“Sooner or later, we are going to capture that helicopter and those that carried out this terror attack.”

No one was hurt in the incident, he said.

The government identified the helicopter pilot as a former member of Venezuela’s main police force, known as the CICPC.

Maduro called on the opposition MUD alliance to denounce the attack but one of its leaders, Freddy Guevara, tweeted there was not yet enough information to comment.

Guevara urged people to take part in anti-government rallies Wednesday — the latest in nearly three months of daily streets protests that have left 76 people dead.

Photos circulating on social media showed a helicopter flying over Caracas with a banner that read “350 Freedom” — alluding to a constitutional clause recently invoked by the opposition to assert the Maduro government’s lack of legitimacy.

The photos showed two people on the chopper, one with his face covered with a mask and the other with it visible.

Videos on social media showed a man who identified himself as a CICPC detective and said he was fighting tyranny, wants Maduro to resign and for Venezuela to hold early elections.

– Anti-US tirade –

==================

Earlier Tuesday, Maduro repeated claims of a US-backed coup attempt and angrily warned President Donald Trump that Venezuela would fight back against such a move.

“If Venezuela were dragged into chaos and violence… we would fight,” Maduro bellowed in a speech to supporters.

If a coup prevented his side fulfilling his contested reform plans, he said, “we would achieve it by arms.”

He said an armed intervention in his country would spark a crisis that would dwarf those caused by conflicts in the Middle East.

Addressing Trump, he said: “You are responsible for restraining the madness of the Venezuelan right-wing.”

The opposition regularly accuses Maduro of repressing and jailing opponents. Judicial NGO Foro Penal says there are 383 political prisoners in Venezuela.

Addressing a crowd over the weekend, Maduro said detainees would face military trial over an alleged coup plot, backed by Venezuelan opposition leaders and aimed at precipitating a US intervention in the country.

“I am not exaggerating when I say it would have involved the arrival of American ships and troops in Venezuelan waters, on Venezuelan soil,” Maduro said.

And on Saturday the head of the Organization of American States dug his heels in a war of words with Caracas, flatly rejecting its demand that he resign.

Maduro had suggested that Luis Almagro — who has criticised the Venezuelan government for violating human rights, interfering in elections and detaining political prisoners — step down in exchange for the country’s continued membership in the regional body.

Though Almagro dismissed that notion, the OAS General Assembly was unable to reach agreement on a plan to deal with the instability in Venezuela at a meeting in Cancun last week.