PETALING JAYA: Kiky, one of Najib Razak’s cats, is back on social media just in time for her owner’s birthday on Monday (July 23).

“Waiting for papa to come down for breakfast, want to peluk manja (pamper with a hug), today is the birthday of papa @najib_razak!” read the post, which was made around 8am.

The admin of the account had also tagged the former prime minister on the post, which has garnered nearly 2,000 likes and over 180 comments at time of writing.

In that “Kiky Pilih Biru” (Kiki Chooses Blue) post, which included Kiky resting on top of the Barisan Nasional logo, the caption read: “This blue is elegant, it makes Kiky look even cuter and fluffier! That’s why #KikyPilihBiru #KikyPilihPapa!”.

Pakatan Harapan swept into power in GE14, ending the more than 60-year rule by Barisan.

In the time since, Kiky’s Instagram account has undergone a name change to @kikytamanduta, which may be a reference to the cat’s current residence at Jalan Langgak Duta, Kuala Lumpur.

A search for the original @kikyseriperdana handle currently shows a locked private account.

“One female adult has died. One young girl in critical condition,” Toronto police said on Twitter, adding that all 14 victims were shot with a handgun.

Police said the suspect was also dead, and The Toronto Star quoted Police Chief Mark Saunders as saying there had been “an exchange of gunfire.”

The suspect is believed to have opened fire at police before killing himself, Global News quoted a Toronto police source as saying.

Officers, some armed with rifles, sealed off Greektown’s main street, known as the Danforth, after getting the call around 10:00 pm (0200 GMT Monday).

Witnesses described to local media hearing about 20 shots and the sound of a weapon being reloaded several times.

Jody Steinhauer told CBC News she was at a neighborhood restaurant with her family when she heard what sounded like 10 to 15 blasts of firecrackers.

She said she was told to run to the back of the restaurant.

“We started to hear people scream out front,” Steinhauer told the broadcaster.

Ontario’s new Premier Doug Ford tweeted a message of solidarity, saying: “My heart goes out to the victims and loved ones of the horrific act of gun violence in Toronto.”

The incident comes with Canada’s largest metropolis concerned over a surge of shootings, more than 200, this year. About two dozen have been fatal.

Canada traditionally has relatively low levels of gun violence, particularly compared with its neighbor the United States.

Mayor John Tory said Sunday night’s firearms violence is “evidence of a gun problem” in Toronto.

“Guns are too readily available to too many people,” Tory told a news conference two hours after the shooting took place.

He added that details of the latest incident remained sketchy.

“We have to figure out what happened here. We don’t know,” he said.

Last week, Toronto police started implementing the enforcement component of their “gun violence reduction plan.” That includes around 200 additional officers on shift in particular neighborhoods between the hours of 7:00 pm and 3:00 am – when most shootings occur.

The Greektown shooting comes about three months after the city was shaken by the deaths of 10 people, most of them women, killed by a man with an apparent grudge against women who drove into them on a busy street in Toronto’s north end.

According to risk analysts Verisk Maplecroft, these extreme weather events are likely to continue in the future given the impact of climate change and modern living environments.

Severe Weather 

A tornado swept through a coastal village in the Philippines on Sunday evening, toppling trees and tearing roofs that injured two people, police and disaster officials said.

Over 300 people fled to the village covered court as the whirlwind streaked across several communities in Barangay (Village) Lapu-lapu in Agdao district shortly after 8:45 p.m., according to Chief Inspector Milgrace Driz, spokesperson of the Southern Mindanao police regional office.

It was the latest severe weather anomaly to hit the country after Tropical Storm Josie passed over parts of the Philippines this past weekend killing 5 people with six more missing.

In Laos, Khammuan and Borikhamxay provincial authorities have warned villagers living along rivers to be on alert of possible flooding after tropical storm Son-tinh lashed northern and central provinces.

Flooding triggered by the same tropical storm over Laos affected 13 Thai provinces and 2,369 families between July 17 and 22, the Thai Department of Disaster Prevention and Mitigation said on Sunday.

Heavy rain triggered by Typhoon Sơn Tinh has left 19 dead, 13 missing and 17 others injured in northern and north-central provinces of Vietnam.

Floods also levelled 217 homes and damaged nearly 10,000 others.

According to the Crop Production Department under the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, 59,000 hectares of rice and 2,000 hectares of maize and other crops in the Red River Delta were inundated. In the north-central region, nearly 51,000ha of rice and 13,400ha of maize and other crops sustained damages.

No likely end 

The UN has warned that “extreme weather events are set to occur more frequently” due to warming global temperatures.

Stanford researchers, who published their work in the journal Science Advances, analyzed the likelihood of warm, dry, and excessively rainy periods in the coming years, all of which are already exacerbated by rising global temperatures and sea levels.

The findings suggest that even if all countries met the commitments of the 2015 Paris climate agreement, heat waves are five times more likely to occur in 50% of Europe and more than 25% of East Asia. In addition, heavy rainfall is three times more likely to occur in 35% of North America, Europe and East Asia.

“Even if this better level were achieved , we would still be living in a climate with a much greater likelihood of unprecedented events than today”, says Noah Diffenbaugh of the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment.

About 90% of North America, Europe, East Asia and the tropics “would see a marked increase in the risk of record heat, rainfall and/or drought.”

Verisk Maplecroft say that an estimated USD$300 billion is lost every year due to heat stress and climate change.

According to their data, “Southeast Asia” is the region set to experience the greatest loss in labour capacity due to heat stress, with a projected 16% decrease by 2045. Singapore faces the greatest potential decline with a projected 25% decrease, followed by Malaysia (24%), Indonesia (21%) and the Philippines (16%).

As the United Nations states, “adaptation to the inevitable impacts of climate change – which under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change is already politically on the same footing as reducing greenhouse gas emissions – will doubtless become increasingly important over the coming years.”

Firefighters on Sunday were battling around 50 wildfires after an unprecedented drought in the region and soaring temperatures, which have reached the hightest in a century.

The 30 French soldiers from a Civil Defence unit landed shortly after midnight on Monday (2200 GMT Sunday) in Stockholm, an AFP correspondent said. They will be joined by another 30 firefighters from the south of France on Monday.

France has already sent two Canadair planes to Sweden after authorities asked for EU emergency help to fight the blazes, which have caused no fatalities so far.

Italy has sent two firefighting aircraft and Norway sent eight helicopters. Germany and Poland also responded to the request for assistance.

Record temperatures above 33 degrees Celsius (90 degrees Fahrenheit) were reported in Uppsala, a city north of Stockholm.

There has been practically no rain since the beginning of May in the country, aside from a paltry 13 millimetres that fell in mid-June.

Denmark, southern Norway and northern Finland are also experiencing a period of extreme heat which, according to weather forecasts, is unlikely to end soon.

Some people say interest in Chinese schools is rising because more people want to learn Mandarin and about the country China, said Romchat, who works in the admissions and international programme development department at Beijing’s School of International Education, University of International Business and Economics (UIBE).

[Related story: Learning from the economic giant next door]

The number of foreign students at UIBE has grown by 5-10 per cent annually in recent years, she said.

Students from other Asian countries represented 60 per cent of all foreign students attending Chinese schools in 2017, followed by Europeans at 16 per cent, Africans at 14, Americans at 8.6 and students from various Pacific nations at 1.5, Romchat said. No 2016 figures exist for comparison, said Romchat, who graduated from UIBE with both a master’s degree and a doctorate.

Most foreign students enrol in degree programmes in China rather than just language courses, she said.

“That shows that the level of education in China is becoming more and more recognised. Most universities in China are also trying to become world-class,” she said.

The format of study is also constantly being improved, she added.

Romchat said that recent years have seen more cooperation on education matters between China and other countries, regions and international organisations.

In parallel with the Belt and Road infrastructure initiative, China’s international influence and competitiveness in education are increasing, she added.

UIBE has signed memoranda of understanding for general collaboration with Thai universities Kasetsart, Thammasat, Silapakorn and Assumption as well as NIDA and the Panyapiwat Institute of Management.

UIBE also intends to start a language programme with Silapakorn University later this year.

“In the future, we will explore additional cooperation over courses as part of the UIBE international cooperation strategy, and we’ve just set up the China-Asean studies centre,” she said.

Situated in urban Beijing, UIBE in 2018 was ranked No 91 among China’s universities but No 1 among universities specialising in economics.

It currently has more than 16,000 full-time students, including more than 3,300 foreigners from 165 countries and territories. Among them are 200 Thais, most of whom are in degree programmes, especially master’s programmes conducted in both Chinese and English.

UIBE aims to be supportive and tries to offer opportunities for students to find jobs or internships in China, said the Thai academic. UIBE is committed to offering a job fair for foreign students.

The university also offers many kinds of scholarships for foreigners, increasing the number over the past three years.

The China Scholarship Council and Chinese Government Scholarship offer full scholarships, including an allowance, accommodations and insurance, while the Beijing Government scholarship is limited to remitting the tuition fee.

This year, the university offered its UIBE president’s scholarship to outstanding students, as well as special scholarships to attract more students from countries specifically targeted by the government of China.

The US president hit back Sunday, portraying the wiretapping of his ex-aide as part of a partisan and “illegal” conspiracy because the FBI partly relied on information provided by Democrat-funded research in seeking its warrant.

The October 2016 application to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court named Carter Page, a former foreign policy advisor to the Trump campaign, according to the documents published late Saturday by The New York Times.

The newspaper, along with USA Today and others, filed Freedom of Information Act requests to obtain the material, which the Justice Department released but with many details redacted.

“The FBI believes Page has been the subject of targeted recruitment by the Russian government,” the initial FBI application says, continuing after a blacked-out section, “…undermine and influence the outcome of the 2016 presidential election in violation of US criminal law.”

“The FBI believes that Page has been collaborating and conspiring with the Russian government,” the document adds lower down.

Release of the documents came just over a week after special counsel Robert Mueller, probing possible collusion between Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia, indicted 12 Russian intelligence officers, accusing them of hacking Democratic challenger Hillary Clinton’s campaign to steal documents, which were then publicly released.

It also caps a week dominated by Trump’s extraordinary inaugural summit with Vladimir Putin, at which he seemed to take at face value the Russian leader’s denial of election interference, dismissing the findings of his own intelligence chiefs.

In a series of tweets on Sunday, Trump said the release confirmed the surveillance of his campaign was a “Witch Hunt” because some of the information that led to the wiretapping was provided by former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele, who was hired on behalf of the Clinton campaign in 2016.

But Trump’s tweets did not address the fact that the FISA application revealed its sourcing at length and was approved by a judge, before being renewed three times by three other judges, all appointed by Republican presidents.

‘Candidate #1’

The surveillance of Page sparked intense rivalry in February between lawmakers from Trump’s Republican Party and their Democratic counterparts.

The former released a memo claiming Democratic-funded research prompted the FBI to spy on Page and that the agency was not sufficiently candid with the court about its sourcing.

Trump defied his own FBI director and the Justice Department to declassify the four-page Republican document, which was based on the much larger secret court application record which has now been released.

A counter-memo from Democrats argued that the surveillance request “was based on compelling evidence and probable cause.”

Writing on the Lawfare blog, David Kris, who served as a prosecutor under the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations, argued the Republican memo now stood exposed as dishonest.

“The footnote disclosing Steele’s possible bias takes up more than a full page in the applications, so there is literally no way the FISA Court could have missed it,” he said. “The FBI gave the court enough information to evaluate Steele’s credibility.”

In the documents released Saturday, the FBI cited a source which, it said, had a history of providing reliable information.

Trump is not named in the document but identified only as “Candidate #1.”

Advisor to Kremlin

The FBI, in its initial application in October 2016, said it “believes that the Russian Government’s efforts are being coordinated with Page and perhaps other individuals associated with Candidate #1’s campaign.”

It added that “Page has established relationships with Russian Government officials, including Russian intelligence officers.”

Page has not been charged. Appearing Sunday on CNN, he denied the allegations. “I’ve never been an agent of the foreign power in any — by any stretch of the imagination.”

He added: “To call me an advisor, I think is way over the top,” before host Jake Tapper interjected to cite a 2013 letter in which Page called himself “an informal advisor to the staff of the Kremlin.”

More Helsinki fallout

The release of the FISA application came as the Trump administration was still battling to push past harsh criticism of the US president’s Helsinki summit with Putin.

“I had a GREAT meeting with Putin and the Fake News used every bit of their energy to try and disparage it. So bad for our country!” Trump tweeted Sunday.

But former secretary of State John Kerry, a Democrat, told CBS that Trump’s performance there was “one of the most disgraceful, remarkable moments of kowtowing to a foreign leader” ever by an American president.

Amid the blowback, Trump surprised Americans — including director of national intelligence Dan Coats — by announcing he had invited Putin to visit Washington later this year.

Informed of that plan during a live television interview, a clearly startled Coats grinned and said, “That’s going to be special.”

After reports said Trump was incensed by Coats’ reaction, the intelligence chief issued a formal statement carried by US media saying that his “admittedly awkward response was in no way meant to be disrespectful.”

They are choosing China as their educational destination to learn how this developing country has transformed itself in four decades from a poor country to an economic powerhouse and the world’s second-largest economy.

[Related story: Why so many foreign students are flocking to China]

From left, Pongsathon Issarawattanakul, Patcharamai Sawanaporn, and Nalin Phongpuksa

“I’m impressed by how fast China is growing. I want to learn how to do business with Chinese people,” said Patcharamai Sawanaporn, 25, a postgraduate student at the Faculty of WTO, Law and Economics at the University of International Business and Economics (UIBE) in Beijing.

When China kicked-off its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in 2013, the UIBE launched a BRI scholarship programme last year. Patcharamai is one of 17 international scholarship students benefiting from the BRI scholarships sponsored by the Chinese government.

Patcharamai likes the Chinese language because she is familiar with it. Her family traces its roots to China hence she studied the Chinese language since her childhood.

After graduating in international relations on China’s foreign policy from the Faculty of Political Science at Chulalongkorn University, she worked for two years before applying for the BRI scholarship last year.

Unlike Patcharamai, Nalin Phongpuksa, 26, a postgraduate MBA student, Chinese programme, at the UIBE, was forced to learn Chinese. But it has all been worth it for she has now fallen in love with the country and its language.

Nalin said she was not interested in studying the Chinese language but 10 years ago, her mother – a Thai diplomat – forced her daughter to learn the language before her diplomatic posting for four years, as she wanted Nalin to prepare for life in Beijing. Nalin did her high school in China’s capital and later returned to Thailand with her mother.

Patcharamai Sawanaporn and her classmates at Beijing’s University of International Business and Economics visit Chinese tech giant Alibaba Group headquarters in Hangzhou as part of their study programme.

After she graduated from Mahamakut Buddhist University and worked for two years in the field of logistics she came back to Beijing.

“China is growing rapidly as an economy and I think I could learn more from them. So last year I applied for a scholarship to come back to study here,” she said.

Both students found life in China was not very difficult, although in the beginning the language barrier was a problem as well as restrictions on accessing social media. But the Thai students have finally settled down and are enjoying the conveniences the country allows foreign students.

They have no problem with their host country’s restricted access to certain websites and social media such as Facebook and Twitter. They have managed to find a way to bypass the restrictions and access online information and social media.

They rely on a VPN or Virtual Private Network, a secure tunnel between two or more devices, which enables them to keep in touch with the world outside China, as well as their families and friends in Thailand.

The VPN is a tool to protect private web traffic from snooping, interference and censorship.

When asked about their opinions of the “communist” regime in China, their responses were much the same.

“China’s socialism is Chinese-style democracy. They have a voting system to select top leaders in every level,” Patcharamai said.

At home in China

The students expressed no worry about living in the one-party state. They’ve got used to life in the host country, including China’s increasingly “cashless” society, where people are in the habit of carrying no cash in favour of a mobile phone when going out.

“I don’t find life hard here. Living in Beijing is more convenient than in Bangkok. Everything is so easy. There is good public transportation as well as the cashless society,” Patcharamai said.

Everybody here pays through mobile phones, she added. No matter how big or small the shops – even at those shops with elderly owners – they all accept mobile payment.

Pongsathon Issarawattanakul, 22, an undergraduate student of the Economics and Trade Faculty at UIBE, is enjoying the cashless society where he can buy things or order things online and pay by mobile.

“My life depends on mobile. It’s my survival kit. You will get some discounts or have a chance to win Ang Pao [gift money] whenever you use mobile payment,” he said.

Nalin said she felt lonely while living in China during her first visit due to the language barrier. She recalled crying almost every day at the challenges she faced as a 16-year-old girl who could not speak Chinese but had to take the subway to school by herself. At that time, only a few subway lines existed.

She, however, felt more relaxed at the prospect of her second residency last year, but was nervous to learn that China is a cashless society.

“I have never used mobile payment before so I was anxious whether I could survive or not. After adjusting myself to the new payment method, I now cannot stop shopping,” Nalin said with a smile.

Nalin Phongpuksa, left, and her Thai friend dressed in traditional Thai costume greet with a “wai” at a cultural festival held at the University of International Business and Economics, in Beijing in April.

However, when the students come home to visit, they do not take the habit with them.

“I do not use mobile payment in Thailand, Patcharamai said. “I feel it’s difficult, because I cannot pay money through just one or two applications like in China. No single app [in Thailand] covers all shops.”

The mobile-payment market in China is dominated by China’s two tech titans – Alipay of Alibaba-related Ant Financial Services Group and WeChat Pay of Tencent. Almost 100 per cent of the shops in China accept payment via the two apps.

Inspired by China’s cutting-edge initiatives, Patcharamai said after finishing her master’s degree next year she wanted to return to work in a business development area involving mobile payment.

“I want to bring back Chinese ideas to develop e-commerce or online payment systems in Thailand,” she said.

But Nalin said she was not certain whether she wanted to come back to Thailand after graduation.

“I think I can stay here for longer to develop myself. I may look for a job here,” she said.

But Pongsathon, who was sent to study Chinese in Beijing while in secondary school and has been there for 10 years, wants to shift his master’s degree studies to a European country.

The Thai government and the US Embassy here are mining history as they seek to publicly portray a two-centuries long connection, but scholars say Thailand is not in a clear spot on Washington’s radar screen.

The Foreign Ministry and the embassy are this year celebrating the long relations between the two countries but in different time frames.

While the US Embassy marked bicentennial ties this year dating back to 1818 when an American ship docked in the Kingdom for the first time, the Thai government is hailing the signing of the Treaty of Amity and Commerce in 1833 as the beginning of diplomatic ties.

Despite the long history, relations between the two countries was considered warmest and closest only during the Cold War when the US intervened in Thailand’s domestic affairs as part of its anti-Communist strategy, Thammasat University historian Thanet Aphornsuvan said.

The current administration under Donald Trump has no clear vision about relations with Thailand. Junta chief Prayut Chan-o-cha’s visit to Washington last year may indicate that the current US administration is not concerned any longer about democracy and the human rights situation in Thailand. But, the visit and brief meeting with Trump did not indicate anything else, he said.

“It is hard to guess what President Trump thinks about Thailand. It seems the current US president has no clear idea about Thailand,” he said.

That assessment is not quite accurate, a US official argued, saying Trump had recently announced an Indo-Pacific strategy that would also cover and impact Thailand. Still, the Trump administration has no clear view on bilateral matters.

A strategy to counter China

The essence of the Indo-Pacific strategy is the sovereign independence of each state in the region. The strategy also has important economic elements. In part it seeks to increase overall trade with US partners in Southeast Asia, said the deputy assistant to the president and senior director for Asia at the White House, Matt Pottinger.

Pottinger was in Thailand a few weeks ago to brief Thai officials on the implementation of the strategy and its possible consequence.

The strategy mainly aimed to counter China, which is regarded as a new 21st century superpower capable of competing with the US against a background of a certain level of conflict between the nations.

The obvious consequence of the rivalry would be seen in economic matters, said Pottinger.

In the near term, there will be disruptions as the US adjusts its economic relationship with China, he said.

In the medium term, the strategy would see new opportunities, with the Asean bloc countries starring in the role of the supply chain to the US and becoming an increasingly attractive market for US goods, and a destination for added investment in the high-tech sector, he said.

“We know that the US cannot get fair trade with China. Not a single Internet company has ever succeeded because the barrier is so high. So those companies are going to look and when they shift their gaze a little bit, they look at the region, where Asean alone accounts for a 630-million population of consumers with a young demographic,” he said.

From the Thai government’s point of view, a small country like Thailand is not able to strike out on its own in dealing with superpowers like the US, notably when the superpower competes with another big country like China.

“We are not in the position to take sides, but [instead] to deal with and cooperate with everybody for the sake of our own national interest,” said a senior official at the foreign ministry.

The reality Thailand has to face is that the US, although its power and influence is in decline, will be the major superpower for the next 20 years, he said.

“In the short term, Thailand has to deal with the reality that Trump – who emphasises protectionism and America first – uses US strength to maintain peace and to seek partnerships without caring about ideology,” he said.

Next month, the government in Nay Pyi Taw and many agencies involved in the crisis will come under intense pressure, he warned. The anniversary of a multi-recommendation report on the Rohingya by the former UN secretary-general that preceded the escalation of violence will draw the world’s focus.

Kobsak quit his position nearly two weeks ago as a senior consultant to the international advisory board tasked with making recommendations after alleged military actions against the Rohingya Muslim minority in the nation drew widespread condemnation.

Kobsak said he quit the post because he saw the board potentially becoming a part of the problem related to the crisis.

The existence of boards and committees could give the false impression that “we have done something to deal with the problems but in fact, we have not”, Kobsak told The Nation. “It’s a kind of self-delusion.”

International organisations working, funding and writing reports on the Rohingya issue were asking about the progress of the work, he said.

“How many have returned safely from refugee camps? Have their homes been rebuilt? Where are the schools for the children and what about public health service for them? These are among the questions that had no firm answers,” Kobsak said.

Kobsak is with Rohingya refugees in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh

August 24 and 25 will mark the anniversary of the recommendation report by former UN chief Kofi Annan, and the militant attack on Myanmar security outposts. That attack prompted an overwhelming response by the Myanmar military, killing thousands of minority civilians and forcing 700,000 people to flee across the border into Bangladesh.

During the anniversary, extremists would be able to exploit the lack of progress on the work of the committee to radicalise the people and destabilise the region, Kobsak said.

The UN General Assembly and the Security Council would raise the Rohingya issue during the September meetings, he said. The European Union has imposed sanctions and the United States might soon follow suit, he said.

Hundreds of thousands of refugees living on steep muddy slopes are facing a very high risk of natural disaster during the monsoon season, he warned.

“We can neither play for time nor hope that time could solve the problem. Time is of the essence in this matter, and in fact it could worsen the situation,” he said.

Kobsak said his resignation was not a protest but rather a message to all concerned parties as he has a lot of sympathy for Myanmar’s people given the complexity of the issues.

“I’m nobody, but I had the honour to work on this tough issue. I blame nobody but speak with good intention from what I have seen,” he said.

Myanmar’s de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi picked former Thai foreign minister Surakiart Sathirathai to lead an advisory board for the implementation of the Annan’s 88 recommendations. The board, made up of foreign experts but also with local members, would complete its mandate by the end of this year.

“The solution is already there, but we cannot just set up committees and committees to oversee the recommendations,” Kobsak said.

Kobsak’s resignation was regarded as another setback for Surakiart’s advisory board after the withdrawal in January of former US ambassador to the UN, Bill Richardson. Richardson had accused the board of “whitewashing” or “cheerleading” Aung San Suu Kyi over the Royingya crisis. Kobsak said Richardson’s pullout was premature.

The Nation could reach neither the Myanmar government nor Surakiart for comment yesterday. Surakiart, however, told Bangkokinsight website that Myanmar has already implemented 60 out of 88 of Annan’s recommendations. The government has also signed a memorandum of understanding with the UN Human Rights Council and UN Development Programme to prepare for the return of refugees, he said.

Rohingya political activist Khin Maung Myint said the Rohingya community in Myanmar had never seen any of the outcomes of the implementation, and the board and the authority have never listened to their opinion.

Rohingya met with Annan’s board twice but not with Surakiart’s team, he said.

“What they [Surakiart’s board] do is fly to the capital and have a lavish dinner, but don’t really tough out the solution about how to implement Annan’s recommendations,” said the activist, who is also known as Sam Naeem. “They cannot solve the problem by setting up commissions.”

Kobsak suggested that Myanmar’s authorities, notably the military, as well as the international community need to work with the new UN special envoy Christine Schraner Burgener. The former Swiss ambassador to Thailand and Myanmar knows the country very well, said Kobsak.

The Canidrome Club, owned by one of the city’s most powerful women Angela Leong, was until its shutdown Asia’s only legal dog-racing track.

The track, established in 1931, had long faced criticism from animal rights groups, who said the greyhounds were treated cruelly and sometimes put to death after a losing streak.

But the closure of the track in the semi-autonomous Chinese city had also raised fears over the fate of the dogs.

The government’s move follows a long wrangle between campaigners and billionaire Leong, a lawmaker in Macau and the fourth wife of gambling mogul Stanley Ho, who has denied the accusations of inhumane treatment.

The Macau government said in a statement Saturday the 533 greyhounds were in “normal health condition”. They were being cared for by government specialists and volunteers from animal rights groups, including Macau-based Anima, which had called for an end to dog-racing.

The government last week slammed Leong’s company Yat Yuen for delaying efforts to find new homes for the dogs, saying it acted irresponsibly.

It said the company could be punished under the Animal Protection Law.

Yat Yuen did not respond to a request for comment.

Anima estimated that some 70 dogs died or were killed in 2016 due to injuries, illnesses or for underperformance, the South China Morning Post has reported.