Myanmar junta charges Aung San Suu Kyi with corruption
Myanmars military junta formally charged Aung San Suu Kyi and other officials with corruption on Thursday, one of the most serious of the seven cases against the civilian leader since her detention during the February coup.
“The Anti-Corruption Commission has inspected corruption cases against ex-state counselor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi,” the regime’s ministry of information posted on its website. “She was found guilty of committing corruption using her rank.” Senior government officials face a maximum of 15 years in prison if convicted on corruption charges.
According to the notification, the Anti-Corruption Commission alleges it found Suu Kyi had illegally accepted $600,000 as well as gold from the former Yangon region chief minister. It also accuses her of misusing her authority to lease a Yangon property as headquarters of a non-profit charity she founded in 2012, resulting in the state losing out on 5.2 billion kyat ($3.15 million) in revenue.
Her lawyer, Khin Maung Zaw, described the accusations as groundless. “In my experience of fifty years as a political analyst and political activist I’ve never met any statesman more honest and incorruptible as Daw Aung San Suu Kyi,” he said. “She might have defects, but personal greed and corruption are not her traits.”
The junta moved Suu Kyi and ex-president Win Myint from their residences in the capital to an unknown location in recent weeks. Suu Kyi, who once defended the military’s brutal crackdown on Rohingya minorities at the International Court of Justice, also faces several other criminal charges.
The alleged violations are for breaching the Export and Import Law, which carries a maximum prison sentence of three years; a section of the Telecommunications Law, up to one year in prison; the Natural Disaster Management Law, up to three years in prison; incitement under Section 505 (a) of the penal code, up to 2 years in prison; and the Burma Official Secrets Act, up to 14 years in prison.
Published : June 11, 2021
By : Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Khine Lin Kyaw, Philip J. Heijmans
Singapore to relax Covid rules in stages as virus cases fall
Singapore will increase group gathering sizes and allow dining-in at food outlets to resume after aggressive virus restrictions over the past month stemmed an outbreak in infections.
From June 14, group sizes will be raised to five from two persons, while operating capacities of attractions, events and cruises will be increased to 50% from 25%, the health ministry said in a statement on Thursday. From June 21, dining-in at restaurants can resume, as well as live performances, in-person tuition and gym classes. For companies however, work-from-home remains the default arrangement, according to the statement.
“Further relaxations such as for group and event sizes, capacity limits, distancing requirements, mask-wearing and travel will be introduced when a sufficient proportion of the population has been fully vaccinated, especially for those who are vaccinated,” it said in the statement.
The country’s daily virus count has dropped to the single-digit range since lockdown-like restrictions such as smaller group sizes and the ban on dining-in were imposed in mid-May, after an outbreak from Changi Airport resulted in the country’s largest active cluster. Singapore’s hard-won success in bringing the latest outbreak under control comes as the city-state ramps up vaccination.
As of June 9, about 44% of the population have received their first dose, and about a third have been fully vaccinated, according to the statement. Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong last month pledged to reopen the economy as testing and inoculation become widespread, signaling a shift away from the strict containment approach that could be detrimental to the trade-reliant country.
The Ministry of Health on Thursday confirmed four new cases of locally transmitted Covid-19 infection, two of which are unlinked. Officials at a briefing said they expect half of Singapore’s population to be fully vaccinated in August. Citizens aged 12 to 39 years old will be invited to register for vaccination from June 11, with this extended to the rest of the population over the coming months.
As more activities resume, the government will also require all staff who work at settings with unmasked clients to be regularly tested, regardless of whether they have been vaccinated. These include staff of dine-in food outlets and fitness studios.
Authorities have also granted interim approval for self-test kits, that produce results in less than 20 minutes, to be sold at retail pharmacies from June 16 onwards. Sales will be initially limited to 10 kits per person.
“This wave of infection is not like a big forest fire where the entire thing is burning. We see spots of fire,” health minister Ong Ye Kung said at the briefing. “We didn’t resort to flying overhead and dropping big water bombs, but the trucks went in with our water tanks and hose, and we managed to put it out.”
As Singapore looks to once again restart activities, Lee was scheduled to meet his Australian counterpart, Prime Minister Scott Morrison, Thursday. Morrison will be the first foreign leader to make an official visit to the city-state since Covid-19 broke out, and this takes place against a backdrop of interest within both countries to establish air travel bubbles with each another.
Published : June 11, 2021
By : Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Philip J. Heijmans, Kwan Wei Kevin Tan
Two men accused of plotting race war plead guilty to immigration-related gun charges
Two men accused of plotting violence at a Virginia gun rights rally to spark a “race war” pleaded guilty Thursday to firearms and immigration-related charges as federal prosecutors moved to increase their sentences by classifying the cases as domestic terrorism.
Appearing in U.S. District Court in Greenbelt, Md., Patrik Mathews, a 29-year-old Canadian national, and Brian Lemley Jr., of Elkton, Md., acknowledged having been members of “the Base,” which federal authorities have said organizes military-style training and encourages violence against minorities. They will be sentenced at a later date.
A third man in the case, William Bilbrough IV, was sentenced to five years in federal prison in December. He had pleaded guilty to two counts of transporting an alien.
Mathews specifically pleaded guilty to transporting a firearm and ammunition in interstate commerce with intent to commit a felony, being an alien in possession of a firearm and ammunition, and obstruction of justice. Lemley pleaded guilty to similar charges, along with transporting and harboring an alien.
The obstruction of justice counts, according to authorities, related to the pair smashing their cellphones and dumping them into a toilet as federal agents were executing an arrest warrant at a residence in Delaware.
“Break your phone,” Lemley ordered. “Smash it.”
In court on Thursday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas Windom described facts that would have been established had the cases gone to trial. There was no mention of plans for the Virginia rally. The narrative instead spoke about the Base and its training camps, firearms possession, large ammunition purchases and Mathews’s status and movement in the United States as an unlawfully present immigrant from Canada.
As members of the Base, Mathews, Lemley and Bilbrough were afforded access to a secure messaging group operated on cellphones. In 2019, Mathews unlawfully crossed the U.S. border from Canada. He was later picked up in Michigan by Lemley and Bilbrough, according to Windom. Mathews was ultimately taken to Chincoteague, Va., Rome, Ga., and Newark, Del., where he could conceal his presence in the country.
In fall 2019, Mathews, Lemley and Bilbrough attended a Base training camp in Georgia, prosecutors said. While in that state, prosecutors alleged, Lemley and Bilbrough purchased about 1,550 founds of 5.56 ammunition. On Dec. 20, 2019, while staying in Delaware, “Mathews took steps to construct a rifle out of various weapons parts” and later fired a rifle at a gun range while Lemley watched through an unattached rifle scope, according to court filings.
At one point, prosecutors alleged, Lemley told Mathews: “I may be going to jail upon discovery of the propaganda on my cellphone.”
“In late 2019 and early 2020, Mathews and his co-defendants in the Base were assembling firearms and collecting thousands of rounds of ammunition with the intent to engage in serious criminal conduct,” said acting United States attorney Jonathan F. Lenzner. “There is no place in our country for racially motivated extremist groups that engage in violence.”
Rachel Byrd, the acting special agent in charge of the FBI Baltimore Field Office, said Thursday’s guilty pleas showed how far Lemley and Mathews were willing to go to support extremist activity.
“This investigation and the guilty plea underscore the continuing threat we face from domestic extremist groups,” Byrd said.
Early in the case, one of Bilbrough’s attorneys described his client as a naive young man who was consumed with fantasies, including going to Ukraine to fight against Russian-backed aggression.
“That’s pie in the sky, but that’s not terrorism,” said the attorney, Robert Bonsib. “A 19-year-old can be a knucklehead sometimes. You’ve got to decide whether he’s a knucklehead or a terrorist. He’s a knucklehead.”
Attorneys for Mathews and Lemley could not be reached for comment Thursday after the plea hearings.
While there is no federal statute dealing specifically with domestic terrorism, prosecutors in Mathews’s case will seek a terrorism “enhancement” at his sentencing.
G-7 in Cornwall aims to be first carbon-neutral summit. What will it take to offset all the jet fuel?
LONDON – British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is promising to host the first-ever “carbon-neutral” summit for the Group of Seven this week – seeking to slash the emissions of climate-changing gases by sourcing the vegetables locally, deploying generators powered by hydro-treated vegetable oil, and offsetting the international jet travel by building a composting facility in Vietnam.
Or at least that’s the idea.
Johnson’s green messaging might have been undercut a bit when he arrived in Cornwall, England, via jet plane, rather than taking the slow train slog from London. It was also jarring that an aircraft carrier – a vessel that uses two large gas-turbine and four diesel engines – was brought in to serve as a backdrop for the seaside event.
Pledging to go carbon-neutral taps into the emerging trend of “sustainable events,” which try to limit carbon dioxide emissions and then compensate for the overages by supporting energy-efficiency projects in the developing world.
Going big on “net zero” also plays into Johnson’s pitch to make this week’s G-7 in Cornwall a steppingstone toward November’s huge COP26 climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland, which will seek to set tougher goals and firmer commitments to curb planetary warming.
Johnson promised the Cornwall meeting itself “will be completely carbon neutral” and “more significantly, it will be the first G-7 at which every member has committed to hitting net zero by 2050.”
But the devil is the details, and the British government and its consultants have released scant information on how they will tabulate the total carbon emissions of the three-day event.
The Cabinet Office said Thursday that the British government will be responsible for mitigating the excess emissions for “official staff, leadership and delegations.”
It has been silent on whether it will be addressing the carbon footprint of the Royal Navy, for example, which has not one but three warships – including its new state-of-the-art aircraft carrier HMS Prince of Wales – idling off the Cornish coast in front of the luxury Carbis Bay Hotel. The carrier needs 109 megawatts of power, enough energy to run a town the size of Swindon, England (population 155,432).
Nor does the government commit to covering the carbon tab for the 6,500 police officers standing guard, with many of them housed on a cruise ship anchored off Falmouth.
Nor, apparently, will the British government be offsetting the carbon emissions of the hundreds of journalists covering the event, and dashing about in taxis, rentals, buses and trains.
But we do know a few things about the Carbon Management Plan for the G-7 summit. According to the government, priority has been given to commissioning Cornish companies “to provide local and sustainable products for use by leaders and delegates,” including recycled wooden fountain pens and reusable coffee cups.
Also, the meals served – incorporating foraged mushrooms and seaweed from the beach – will be sourced, as much as possible, from within a 100-mile radius, adhering to the popular “think globally, eat locally” diktat.
“We’re using whole animals and breaking them down, using veg from farms nearby, and seafood from the harbors there,” the event’s guest chef, Adam Handling, told iNews.
“The menu is designed to be sustainable and zero-waste, but it’s also supposed to be fun. We’re using amazing ingredients, like meadowsweet and pineapple weed,” he said. “We’re doing an awesome velvet crab starter with roast cauliflower puree and herbs foraged from the seashore.”
The extra emissions of carbon dioxide produced by the summit will be mitigated by investments in certified projects in the developing world, according to the government, including less-smoky cookstoves in Uganda, a composting facility in Vietnam and a biogas energy plant in Thailand.
“Our global projects such as hydropower in Laos will help to offset emissions generated by the gathering of world leaders and every coffee cup, pen and notepad used at the summit will be recyclable or made entirely from recycled materials,” said Alok Sharma, government minister and president-designate of COP26, in a statement.
Offsetting all these extra emissions can be done, essentially, by buying carbon credits, through markets and programs run by the United Nations and other international agencies and nonprofits.
Typically, the greatest energy use for an international gathering is getting the participants there by jets.
At the G-7, Britain is hosting leaders flying in from the United States, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan, for their first face-to-face discussions in almost two years, as well as delegations from the European Union, South Korea, Australia and South Africa. India’s leader, Narendra Modi, is not joining in person, as he attends to a coronavirus surge in his country.
While we do not have carbon calculation for a seat on Air Force One, as an example, the German nonprofit Atmosfair estimates that a business-class, round-trip flight from Washington Dulles to London Heathrow would emit approximately 4,127 kilograms (or 4 tonnes) of carbon dioxide equivalents.
In comparison, Atmosfair calculates that driving a car for a year emits 2,000 kilograms, while the annual emissions per capita in Ethiopia is 560 kilograms. Another consultancy roundly estimates that one night in a five-star hotel equals 35 kilograms of carbon gas equivalents.
To offset that plane ride from Washington to London would set a passenger back 95 euros in carbon credits, or about $115, which would be used for one of those composing or biogas or small hydropower projects the British government is eyeballing for its mitigation.
“Calling it the most sustainable event ever? That might be a little bold and I find it unlikely,” said Owen Hewlett, chief technical officer for Gold Standard, a climate mitigation think tank, who said that robust science-based emission standards are still evolving for the event sector.
But Hewlett said it was good that Britain was trying – and that it had contracted with experts and is seeking legitimate certification. He agreed that the details could be devilish and that estimating a carbon budget depends on how broadly the parameters of an event – its catering, beds, transport, security, prep work, waste and supply chains – are accounted for.
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“We don’t have uniform criteria for measuring yet,” cautioned Fiona Pelham, chief executive of Positive Impact, a carbon emissions and event consultancy. “And transparency can be an issue, too.”
She and others hoped the British government would issue a report on how well it did at the G-7 summit.
Biden, Boris Johnson release updated Atlantic Charter after first meeting
ST. IVES, England – President Joe Biden and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson have different politics, different styles and some deep differences of opinion, including over Britains exit from the European Union.
Biden, when running for president, once even disparaged Johnson as a “physical and emotional clone” of President Donald Trump.
But the two leaders were all smiles as they met for the first time Thursday, and they both underscored the history and durability of transatlantic ties as they focused on common goals such as ending the covid-19 pandemic and combating climate change.
“Fantastic to see you here,” Johnson enthused.
“I’m thrilled to be here,” Biden said.
Johnson later told British broadcasters that Biden president’s approach is a “breath of fresh air,” and that his talks with Biden had gone well.
The Biden administration has tried to play down the question of whether Biden would be chummy with Johnson, whom he had never met before Thursday, and Biden’s worry that Johson’s government may undermine the historic Good Friday peace agreement with Northern Island. Biden aides point instead to the long list of shared priorities and joint endeavors, including nearly 20 years fighting together in Afghanistan.
“The U.K. was with us from the start – they always are – equally committed to rooting out that terrorist threat,” Biden said after his meeting with Johnson.
He did not lavish his host with praise, and he did not hold a news conference alongside Johnson, previously a standard feature of visits by leaders of either nation to the other. Biden did not mention the Northern Ireland issue publicly, but officials of both governments said it was discussed.
Biden instead focused on a touch-up to the Atlantic Charter, an 80-year-old statement of solidarity between Washington and London, before announcing that the United States is purchasing 500 million Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine doses to donate to the rest of the world.
Biden called the vaccine handouts, first reported by The Washington Post on Wednesday, a moral and practical imperative and stressed that they come “with no strings attached.”
“Our vaccine donations don’t include pressure for favors, or potential concessions,” Biden said. “We are doing this to save lives to end this pandemic. That’s it, period.”
In a call with reporters Thursday, senior administration officials underscored the significance of Biden’s choice of the United Kingdom for his first foreign visit, and the meeting with Johnson as his first with a foreign leader abroad. The two countries share common security interests, an economic dimension – the United States views Britain as its largest investment partner and fourth-largest trading partner – and a commitment to democratic values, the officials said.
“Britain is blessed with alliances that keep us safe and advance our values, and we are putting all of this to work for the benefit of the British people,” Johnson tweeted Thursday atop a mission statement for the Group of Seven leaders’ meeting starting Friday.
Biden and Johnson, who is hosting the G-7 at a nearby coastal resort, agreed to an updated version of the Atlantic Charter, originally signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill in 1941 governing technology, travel and some trade ties between the two nations.
The new document details eight areas of agreement, expressed mostly in broad strokes with few specifics, starting with a “resolve to defend the principles, values and institutions of democracy and open societies, which drive our own national strength and our alliances.”
The two leaders also pledge to “strengthen the institutions, laws and norms that sustain international cooperation to adapt them to meet the new challenges of the 21st century.”
One senior administration official described the document as “a profound statement of purpose of democracy,” coming at a time when Biden has repeatedly outlined an existential struggle for the future of the globe between democracy and autocracy.
The agreement falls short of the independent U.S.-U.K. trade deal that Johnson wants now that Brexit is complete. Biden has indicated that he could withhold such a deal over concerns that Johnson’s government is undermining the 1998 Northern Ireland peace agreement that ended three decades of sectarian conflict.
“Any steps that imperil or undermine it will not be welcomed by the United States,” national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters aboard Air Force One on Wednesday.
The Biden administration authorized a highly unusual warning from the highest-ranking U.S. diplomat in Britain over the issue last week. The Times newspaper reported that U.S. diplomat Yael Lempert warned Johnson’s government against further “inflaming” tensions.
Johnson said that the U.S. president did not push him on the issue during their meeting on Thursday, but said that maintaining peace in Northern Ireland and supporting the Good Friday Agreement was “absolutely common ground” between Washington and London.
A joint statement issued after the meeting said both nations would “reaffirm their commitment to working closely with all parties to the Agreement to protect its delicate balance and realise its vision for reconciliation, consent, equality, respect for rights, and parity of esteem.”
Biden’s Irish Catholic heritage is a central feature of his long political career. He opposed Brexit in part on principle, since it cleaved a major economy and U.S. ally from the European Union, and partly out of concern that it would reopen wounds with Ireland, which remains part of the E.U.
Irish officials have said they welcomed the Biden administration’s focus on the dispute over the border with Northern Ireland, with prime minister Micheál Martin calling the U.S. president’s interest in the issue a significant development.
“I think he is saying to the United Kingdom, ‘Let’s do the sensible thing here,'” Martin told reporters on Thursday, broadcaster Raidió Teilifís Éireann reported.
Britain is trying to negotiate a new agreement with the E.U. over goods crossing the border between Ireland and Northern Ireland, which is part of the United Kingdom. Negotiations face a June 30 deadline.
Biden and first lady Jill Biden are also set to meet Queen Elizabeth II at Windsor Castle on Sunday.
During a meeting between Johnson and his new wife, Carrie, and the Bidens, Jill Biden sported a black blazer with the word “LOVE” emblazoned across the back – a fashion choice that could be interpreted as a dig at former first lady Melania Trump, who in 2018 infamously traveled to a migrant children detention center in Texas wearing a jacket with “I really don’t care. Do U?” printed across the back.
Jill Biden’s message, too, offered a stark contrast to the sentiment Trump routinely brought to such gatherings.
“I think that we’re bringing love from America,” the first lady said. “This is a global conference, and we are trying to bring unity across the globe and I think it’s needed right now, that people feel a sense of unity from all the countries and feel a sense hope after this year of the pandemic.”
Johnson shares a populist worldview with Trump, who cheered Johnson’s rise as a champion of a divorce with the European Union. That relationship hangs over Johnson’s meeting with Biden, whose first foreign trip is otherwise dominated by meetings with European leaders who are relieved to be rid of Trump. Another exception comes at the end of Biden’s tour, when he meets with Russian President Vladimir Putin next week in Geneva.
The series of international gatherings that Biden is attending – the G-7, a NATO summit and a summit with European Union leaders – come as the United States and Europe emerge from the pandemic much faster than most of the rest of the world, prompting some criticism of “vaccine apartheid.”
In the phone call with reporters, senior administration officials described the U.S. donation of 500 million vaccines as both “the right thing to do” and in U.S. national security interests to help stem a deadly pandemic that does not respect geographical boundaries.
The officials stressed the robust effort to distribute vaccines to some of the hardest-hit countries around the world is “tangible proof” that democratic countries are leading the effort to beat the deadly pandemic.
Part of Biden’s unofficial mission on his first foreign sojourn is to help improve America’s standing abroad, an impression that has improved since he took office, according to a Pew Research Center global survey released Thursday.
In a dozen countries surveyed over the past two years, 62%of the respondents now have a favorable view of the United States, compared to 34% at the end of Trump’s four years, Pew found. Pew also found that 75% of those surveyed expressed confidence in Biden to “do the right thing regarding world affairs,” compared to 17% for the final year of Trump.
The White House has also stressed the symbolic importance of Biden’s meetings with a string of democratic leaders before he sees the authoritarian Putin.
“These bonds of history and shared sacrifice run deep and are strong, based on values, and they endure,” Biden said Wednesday night as he addressed U.S. troops stationed at an air base in Britain.
“You are the essential part of what makes up this ‘special relationship’ between Great Britain and the United States,” Biden continued, using an affectionate term for the U.S.-U.K. bond. The term is often credited to Churchill.
Johnson is known to dislike the term “special relationship,” considering it slightly demeaning and making the United Kingdom seem needy and weak.
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“The prime minister is on the record previously saying he prefers not to use the phrase, but that in no way detracts from the importance with which we regard our relationship with the U.S., our closest ally,” a spokesperson for Johnson said earlier this week.
Johnson may have also disliked what Biden went on to say to the U.S. troops and families gathered at RAF Mildenhall, a British air base in Suffolk. The president quoted Irish poet William Butler Yeats, although he did not identify either the poet or the work by name.
“‘The world’s changed, changed utterly,'” Biden said, quoting Yeats. “‘A terrible beauty has been born.'”
The line is from “Easter 1916,” which is about the Irish rebellion against English rule.
Published : June 11, 2021
By : The Washington Post · Anne Gearan, Ashley Parker
Biden revokes Trumps TikTok, WeChat ban order, but White House to subject apps to a security review
WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden on Wednesday revoked Trump administration executive orders that sought to ban TikTok, WeChat and other Chinese-owned apps and replaced them with a new security review that could prompt fresh steps to restrict those or other apps.
Biden’s new executive order would create a process to scrutinize whether apps controlled by a foreign adversary present risks to U.S. national security and the security of Americans’ sensitive personal data, the White House said.
After the government reviews each particular app, it can “take action, as appropriate,” the administration said in a fact sheet.
Senior administration officials said they remain concerned about the risks posed by apps owned by Chinese companies but wanted to establish a more “robust” process for reviewing them. They noted that the Trump administration’s ban orders had faced several court challenges that led judges to temporarily block the bans while the cases proceeded.
Asked whether the Biden administration still intends to ban TikTok or WeChat, one senior administration official said: “All the mobile apps named in the revoked executive orders are eligible for evaluation under the process we’ve outlined.”
“The administration is extremely committed to ensure protection of Americans’ data from foreign at-risk apps across the board . . . including large and popular apps. I think there are a wide range of actions that can be negotiated or imposed to ensure Americans’ data can be comprehensively protected,” another senior administration official told reporters Wednesday. Both officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to preview the new executive order.
“The Biden administration is committed to promoting an open, interoperable, reliable and secure Internet; protecting human rights online and offline; and supporting a vibrant, global digital economy,” the administration said in a fact sheet. “Certain countries, including the People’s Republic of China (PRC), do not share these values and seek to leverage digital technologies and Americans’ data in ways that present unacceptable national security risks while advancing authoritarian controls and interests.”
TikTok’s corporate owner, ByteDance, declined to comment Wednesday. Tencent, which owns WeChat, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
In a statement, the American Civil Liberties Union warned the Biden administration against actions that would infringe on the First Amendment rights of TikTok and WeChat users. “President Biden is right to revoke these Trump administration executive orders, which blatantly violated the First Amendment rights of TikTok and WeChat users in the United States,” the statement quoted a senior ACLU attorney, Ashley Gorski, as saying. “The Commerce Department’s review of these and other apps must not take us down the same misguided path, by serving as a smokescreen for future bans or other unlawful actions.”
U.S. WeChat users who sued the Trump administration also applauded Biden’s move. A ban “would have led to the unprecedented shutdown of a major platform for communications relied on by millions of people in the United States,” said Michael Bien, lead counsel for the plaintiffs.
Administration officials said Biden’s order doesn’t affect a separate Trump directive from last August instructing ByteDance to divest its U.S. TikTok operations. The interagency Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or CFIUS, has been overseeing ByteDance’s proposals to comply with that order, which at one point included an offer to spin off part of its operations to Oracle.
“The CFIUS action remains under active discussion by the U.S. government. I’m not in a place to share any details of that,” one of the administration officials said.
The new Biden order directs the Commerce secretary to prepare two reports: one recommending “additional executive and legislative actions to address the risk associated with” apps subject to the jurisdiction of a foreign adversary, and another offering recommendations to prevent a foreign adversary from harming Americans by gaining access to their health or genetic information.
The Trump administration last year sought to ban TikTok, WeChat and other apps owned by Chinese companies, including the mobile-payment app Alipay, on the grounds that they collected “vast swaths” of data on Americans and offered the Chinese Communist Party avenues for censoring or distorting information. The Army and the Navy banned service members from using TikTok on government-issued devices in 2019 and the Defense Department issued a warning to its employees about the app.
ByteDance and users of TikTok and WeChat quickly challenged Trump’s executive orders in court, prompting judges to issue preliminary injunctions halting the bans.
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In the WeChat case, the court said the plaintiffs had raised “serious questions” about the ban hurting their First Amendment rights. In one of the TikTok cases, users of the app argued that the ban would eliminate the “professional opportunities” they derived from the app.
The Trump administration appealed those preliminary injunctions, but the Biden administration in February asked federal appeals courts to halt those proceedings while it reviewed the proposed bans.
One of the Biden officials said some of Trump’s executive orders “weren’t implemented in the soundest fashion” and that the White House is now trying to establish “a robust comprehensive process against a set of clear and intelligible criteria” to determine any risks posed by apps.
The administration gave similar reasons for changing a different Trump order last week. While Biden preserved the heart of Trump’s prohibitions on U.S. investment in companies that support China’s military, he moved oversight of the ban from the Defense Department to the Treasury Department, to give it stronger legal grounding.
“Like the administration’s order last week to ban investment in Chinese surveillance companies, this framework looks to improve on the Trump approach, but it should be judged on how they actually utilize the tool going forward,” said Eric Sayers, a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and former Pentagon official.
“Will it be used aggressively against TikTok, Alipay or other tech platforms that capture vast amounts of Americans’ data, or will it be employed rarely and with caution? If it’s the latter, this will be an improved framework but hold little value,” he said.
Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., called revoking the Trump bans a “major mistake,” saying in a tweet that it “shows alarming complacency” toward China’s access to Americans’ personal information and toward China’s “growing corporate influence.”
One former U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity, said the new order “suggests that the export of data to China is a pressing problem for the Biden administration, but it offers no clarity as to how they will address it.”
“The administration clearly wants to extricate itself from the legal morass created by its predecessor,” the former official said, “but it’s not yet clear they are committed to taking meaningful action in a timely way.”
Published : June 10, 2021
By : The Washington Post · Jeanne Whalen, Ellen Nakashima
As Indias pandemic surge eases, a race begins to prepare for a possible next wave
NEW DELHI – Two months ago, the Lok Nayak Jai Prakash Narayan Hospital in Indias capital was a battlefield. Every one of its 1,500 beds for coronavirus patients was full. It came perilously close to running out of oxygen not once, but three times.
Now, the hospital has space for every patient who needs a bed and there is oxygen to spare. Ritu Saxena, the hospital’s deputy medical superintendent, no longer spends nights fielding calls from desperate relatives. Instead, she is focused on the future: helping prepare the hospital for more surges.
“The worst is definitely over,” a relieved Saxena said.
But now India faces the challenge of trying to gain the upper hand. A resurgence of the coronavirus is feared by many public health experts if nothing is done. Key to the scramble is a renewed vaccination push and efforts to boost India’s medical infrastructure to stockpile supplies, such as oxygen cylinders, and augment care networks from city slums to far-flung villages.
India’s vaccine makers, particularly the Serum Institute, are under pressure to enhance production to service the urgent domestic need even as the world waits for exports from the country to resume.
Failure could be brutal. India is reeling from a pandemic punch that brought staggering official daily death tolls of more than 4,500 at its peak in mid-May. At present, just 3.5 percent of India’s more than 1.3 billion people are fully vaccinated.
And the clock is ticking. The timing and intensity of another surge remain difficult to predict. K. VijayRaghavan, a scientific adviser to the government, told reporters last month that a third wave was “inevitable” as the virus mutates. But, he said, the level of a coronavirus rebound could be reduced with strong measures.
“It depends much on how effectively the guidance is implemented,” he said referring to surveillance and containment measures. “It is difficult but we can – and must – do this.”
On Tuesday, India recorded nearly 86,500 cases – the lowest figure in two months. Yet the number is still the highest in the world.
India also continues to record the highest number of deaths in the world with a daily toll of more than 2,000 – a vast undercount according to experts. This week, for the first time in months, businesses and shops reopened in New Delhi and Mumbai, cities that were once at the heart of the country’s pandemic crisis.
India was caught off-guard by the ferocity of the coronavirus wave, driven largely by a highly infectious local variant. Hospitals ran full, medicines were in short supply and dead bodies were found floating in the Ganges river, a testament to the scale of the crisis.
“It’s not a question of whether but when,” said Giridhar Babu, an epidemiologist at the Public Health Foundation of India, referring to a possible new coronavirus wave. An “aggressive containment” strategy, he said, is essential.
“As soon as a cluster of cases is found, they should be sequenced for genomic markers to check if they are the same or new variants,” Babu said.
The other way to counter the inevitable was faster and wider vaccine coverage, he said. More than 230 million Indians have received at least one shot of a coronavirus vaccine. But in a country of India’s size, that means just 18 percent of the population is partially vaccinated.
India’s vaccination drive that started in January with fanfare has hobbled in the past few months, at a time when it needed to have ramped up.
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Prime Minister Narendra Modi has stepped in. On Monday, he reversed his government’s decision to give state governments a role in acquiring coronavirus vaccines. The policy had been criticized for exacerbating shortages in some regions.
Beginning June 21, the central government will be in charge of buying 75 percent of the vaccine supply, with the rest being earmarked for the private sector for purchase. Coronavirus vaccinations for all adults at government sites will be free.
The reversal comes days after the Supreme Court slammed the government for its muddled policies.
Doctors say the speed of vaccination is crucial for India. “The rapidity of vaccination plays an important role in the evolution of new variants,” said Lancelot Pinto, a pulmonologist at P.D. Hinduja Hospital in Mumbai. The virus, he said, will learn how to mutate and propagate among those not vaccinated.
“We don’t want to be in a situation where the pace [of vaccinations] is so slow that the virus outsmarts us,” Pinto said.
Inequities in the vaccination drive have emerged in recent days, with the rich being able to afford shots at private hospitals while the poor struggle to pay or register online to book a slot. Authorities in Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state, are investigating a free vaccine camp held in a posh residential colony of Noida using jabs meant for a small town miles away.
In rural areas, meanwhile, vaccine hesitancy and a lack of awareness remain roadblocks.
Babu, the epidemiologist, said India’s goal should be to fully vaccinate all of its vulnerable population or those with comorbidities and administer one dose to all adults. For that, he said, India would need to administer 10 million doses a day, a challenging acceleration from its current 3 million doses daily.
With vaccines heading back under New Delhi’s control, state governments are charting their own plans for the months to come. The states of Delhi and Maharashtra have set up pediatric task forces. During the recent wave, doctors reported many more younger patients with severe illness than in the previous surge.
Khusrav Bajan, an intensive-care specialist and member of Maharashtra’s covid-19 task force, said the state was setting up intensive-care beds for children and training health-care providers in rural areas in treatment protocols. Hospitals with more than 100 beds were asked to set up in-house oxygen plants to avoid shortages.
“We are much wiser than before,” Bajan said.
New Delhi, the nation’s capital that hit 28,000 daily cases in April, is planning to handle a possible peak of 37,000 cases in any future surge.
The city was ravaged by an acute shortage of oxygen, with major hospitals pleading for the government to send supplies. Dozens of small oxygen plants are being set up and storage capacity being increased to have one day’s buffer of supply.
“It is our duty to be prepared” in case the third wave “turns out to be extremely dangerous,” said Arvind Kejriwal, the Delhi chief minister, announcing the measures last week.
Earlier this month – in a decision to minimize risks of a large outbreak – the government canceled a crucial exam for students in grade 12 that determines college admissions. Modi said the decision “safeguards the health as well as future of our youth.”
For Saxena, the doctor in New Delhi, memories of the past months are raw and traumatizing.
“The second wave was like a tsunami and we were not fully prepared,” she said.
She anticipates a “huge” number of patients if a third wave hits. But this time, she said, they “are ready to face it.”
Published : June 10, 2021
By : The Washington Post · Niha Masih, Taniya Dutta
Apple settles lawsuit after iPhone techs posted womans explicit photos on Facebook, report says
Apple paid a multimillion dollar settlement to a woman after iPhone repair techs posted risque pictures from her phone to Facebook, one of the most severe customer privacy breaches yet to be made public, according to legal documents obtained by the Telegraph.
The tech behemoth agreed to cover the amount for Apple-approved repair contractor Pegatron following a 2016 incident in which an unnamed Oregon college student sent her phone to Apple for repairs after it stopped working.
Two iPhone repair technicians in Sacramento, uploaded “10 photos of her in various stages of undress and a sex video” to her Facebook account, resulting in “severe emotional distress” for the young woman, according to the Telegraph’s review of legal records.
Pegatron, a major Apple manufacturer with facilities across the globe, had to reimburse Apple for the settlement and face insurers who didn’t want to pay for it, according to the news outlet. Legal documents revealed that the woman was paid an unspecified sum, reported to be a “multimillion-dollar” amount, and that her lawyers had demanded upward of $5 million, the Telegraph reported.
Apple told The Washington Post in a statement that there are protocols in place to ensure the privacy and security of customers during the repair process.
“When we learned of this egregious violation of our policies at one of our vendors in 2016, we took immediate action and have since continued to strengthen our vendor protocols,” a company spokesperson said.
Apple didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Apple keeps a firm grip on the repair of its devices, arguing that allowing only approved retailers and vendors to repair its products ensures the privacy of its customers. The revelation of the lawsuit pokes holes in the company’s stance that only authorized retailers can keep customer information secure.
Apple was listed as a “customer” in the lawsuit in an effort to keep the issue private, the Telegraph reported.
But Apple’s name became public in the matter in a separate, unrelated lawsuit against the firm and Pegatron, according to the news outlet.
Lawyers for the young woman warned of suing for invasion of privacy and emotional distress along with “negative media publicity” before a settlement that prevents the woman from speaking about and disclosing the specified amount was reached, the outlet reported.
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The settlement isn’t the first time Apple has had to handle the misdeeds of employees.
In 2019, a California woman alleged that an Apple store employee had texted a private picture on her phone to himself. That employee was no longer working for the company after Apple conducted its investigation.
Apple store employees at a Brisbane, Australia, location were fired in 2016 for taking candid pictures of female employees and customers’ bodies and stealing photos from consumers’ phones to rank their bodies.
The number of Covid-19 cases in Southeast Asia crossed 4.23 million, with 23,385 new cases reported on Wednesday, higher than Tuesday’s tally of 20,286. New deaths were 422, increasing from Tuesday’s 404.
The total number of Covid-19 deaths in Asean now stands at 82,912.
Vietnam is planning to postpone the hosting of the 31st SEA Games, which was originally scheduled for November 31-December 2, to next year as the country faces a new Covid-19 wave.
A top Vietnamese newspaper reported that although the number of patients in the country is still low compared to other nations in the region, Vietnam still has the lowest inoculation rate per total population in Asean.
Meanwhile, Brunei’s Public Health Ministry reported on Wednesday that two people had contracted Covid-19, the first time in 398 days that new cases have been found, bringing the cumulative cases in that country to 246 patients. The two patients are returnees from Manila, Philippines, who had entered the country on May 26.
China urges ASEAN to avoid “undue interference” in Myanmar crisis
China has asked ASEAN nations to avoid “undue interference” in the Myanmar crisis, as the United States and other democratic forces have been imposing sanctions on the Southeast Asian countrys junta, the Foreign Ministry said Tuesday.
“China is a close neighbor of Myanmar linked by mountains and rivers, and the situation in Myanmar has a direct bearing on China’s interests,” Foreign Minister Wang Yi told his counterparts from the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations on Monday.
During the face-to-face meeting in China’s south-central city of Chongqing held amid the coronavirus pandemic, Wang said Beijing “supports ASEAN in playing a constructive role in properly handling Myanmar’s domestic issues.”
“We are willing to continue to work with ASEAN to jointly urge all parties in Myanmar to put the interests of the people first, and keep calm to eliminate all kinds of violence,” he said.
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China has refrained from condemning Myanmar’s military coup, unlike the United States, the European Union and Japan.
Beijing is believed to be attempting to increase its economic and security influence in the neighboring country, from which it imports natural resources like gas and crude oil, while its tensions with the United States and other democratic countries have been escalating in the Asia-Pacific region.
Myanmar is located right on the path of China’s strategic plan to gain direct access to the Indian Ocean as part of its “Belt and Road” project for the development of infrastructure and trade across Asia, Europe and Africa.
China seeks to work in tandem to deal with the virus outbreak and the Myanmar issue with the ASEAN members, some of which have strengthened economic ties with Beijing but depend on Washington in security terms.
It has provided them with China-developed coronavirus vaccines as it promotes “vaccine diplomacy” across the globe.
ASEAN groups Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
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