Matthew Cheung Kin-chung urged immediate efforts to bring back peace to Hong Kong in a bid to rebuild the confidence and trust of the international community, as well as the global image of Hong Kong.

It is unavoidable that some local and international talent consider building a career elsewhere for various reasons in the current situation, he wrote in his weekly online blog.

The chief secretary for administration however stressed that there is no massive brain drain in Hong Kong, whose advantages and competitiveness are still recognized by international institutions.

He said fostering and attracting top talent is crucial to the development of Hong Kong, which is facing the challenge of an aging population and a labor shortage.

The HKSAR government will continue working on a human resource plan to make Hong Kong more competitive and help the younger generation to grasp the opportunity of development, said the senior official.

US attorney for the Southern District of New York Geoffey Berman and special agent in charge of the New York field office of the Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) Peter Fitzhugh announced on Friday that Latchford had been charged with wire fraud, substantive wire fraud and smuggling, each of which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years.

He was also charged with conspiracy to commit an offence against the US, entry of goods by false statements and one count of aggravated identity theft, according to Berman’s office.

Latchford, who has dual British and Thai citizenship, donated some antiquities to Cambodia years ago.

Berman said: “As alleged, Latchford built a career out of the smuggling and illicit sale of priceless Cambodian antiquities in the international art market, often straight from archaeological sites.

“This prosecution sends a clear message to the art market and to those who profit from the illegal trafficking of cultural treasures – the US and the Southern District of New York will use every legal tool to stop the plundering of cultural heritage.”

Special agent Fitzhugh said that through the investigative efforts of HSI special agents, three stolen artefacts from Cambodia and another from India, valued at a total of $750,000, had been recovered and would be returned to their homelands.

The court and HSI officials said that from the mid-1960s to the early 1990s, Cambodian archaeological sites from the ancient Khmer Empire experienced serious damage and looting when the country underwent civil unrest.

The looted artefacts went into the international market through an organised network. They first reached the Cambodia-Thailand border and were then transferredto Thai brokers and further to international customers, the court document said.

“From at least in or about 2000, up to and including at least in or about 2012, Latchford engaged in a fraudulent scheme to sell looted Cambodian antiquities on the international art market, including to dealers and buyers in the US,” the document said.

It said that Latchford manipulated the provenance of the antiquities he sold in order to conceal the fact that the artefacts were looted products or came through unauthorised exaction and illicit smuggling.

He also misrepresented the provenance of Cambodian antiquities in letters, emails, invoices and other communications.

Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts spokesman Long Ponnasirivath told The Post on Sunday that Cambodia used to receive some antiquities from Latchford as one of its donors, but that Cambodia respects the US court proceeding in dealing with Latchford’s case.

He continued that Cambodia and the US government have a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to cooperate with each other in returning stolen artefacts back to Cambodia. It also has an agreement with other countries to stop the traffic of antiquities.

Cambodia also appealed to all individuals who had taken antiquities from the Kingdom during the civil unrest to return them.

“We received from him [Latchford] as he was a donor. He donated and we received them without evaluating the artefacts. If they give [the antiquities] back to Cambodia, we will welcome them and thank them. For his court case, if the US would need our cooperation in the legal proceeding, we will cooperate,” he said.

HSI seized an ancient sandstone sculpture described as a Shiva and Uma statue from San Francisco. The sculpture dated back to 921-945 AD and is valued at approximately $350,000.

The case is also linked to Latchford, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) said.

Women were at the forefront of these protests – and they didn’t stop pushing for change once Bashir resigned and the military followed by a transitional government took over. After 30 years of Bashir’s repressively conservative rule based on an extreme interpretation of Islam, Sudanese women have more grievances than days in the year to demonstrate.

On Thursday night, the transitional government took a significant step in addressing Sudan’s troubled past by repealing a public order law that had granted police far-reaching powers to arrest people for a litany of infractions, including women who were found dancing, wearing trousers, vending on the streets or mixing with men who weren’t their relatives. Punishments included flogging, fines and, in rare cases, stoning and execution, according to the BBC.

Taken together, these laws were a tool to repress women’s rights and freedoms of all kinds, from what they wore, where they went, who they associated with, what they studied and where they worked. The power of these laws also came from their vagueness and arbitrariness, which allowed police and judges to apply them in just about any way they wanted.

“The normal lay policeman could decide he doesn’t like the dress a woman’s wearing and immediately take her to court,” where she could be flogged, said Sara Abouh, a former member of parliament and now a professor at Khartoum University. “The law doesn’t respect women at all.”

Sudan’s transitional prime minister, Abdalla Hamdok, quickly praised the move on Twitter, saying he paid “tribute to the women and youth of my country who have endured the atrocities that resulted from the implementation of this law.”

“This law is notorious for being used as a tool of exploitation, humiliation & violation of rights,” he continued in another tweet. “Many have used this law for financial & psychological exploitation. Along the way, a lot of women and youth endured confiscation of their belongings and unforgettable harm.”

The sentiment was shared by women’s activists who had long campaigned for the law’s repeal.

“These laws were used to designed to intentionally oppress women,” Khartoum-based women’s rights activist Yosra Faud told the Guardian. “Abolishing them means a step forward for the revolution in which masses of women have participated. It’s a very victorious moment for all of us, and I’m hoping to see more from our transitional government.”

Sudan’s uprising began last December after Bashir imposed austerity measures that raised the price of basics like bread. But once the floodgates opened, people stood their ground and demanded that Bashir and his whole regime had to go.

Twenty-two-year-old Alaa Salah became an icon of the revolution, and the power of women in making it happen, after the scene of her poetically rallying a crowd in Khartoum went viral.

The economic grievances that sparked the protests also underscored the deep class, social and geographic divides that had grown under decades of dictatorship.

“The way the (public order) law was applied underlined the divisions and tensions within Sudanese society,” James Copnall, a BBC reporter and Sudan analyst, wrote. “In recent years it was common to see rich Khartoum women wearing trousers in public – while those targeted by the morality police were often poorer women from the marginalized areas on the periphery of this vast country.”

Despite the progress, other laws remain on the books that restrict what women can wear and allow for flogging, among other repressive criminal codes.

Amnesty International praised the law’s appeal in a statement but also called on the transitional government to go further in amending other restrictive laws, such as those “governing so-called ‘morality,’ including consensual sex, dress code, and other matters on the conduct of individuals in private spaces.”

Abouh called on Sudan’s leaders to change the country’s family status laws, which, based on an extreme interpretation of religious law, limit women’s rights in marriage, divorce and child custody.

As The Washington Post’s Max Bearak reported in April, “Bashir’s interpretation of Islamic law was more lenient than, say, that of Saudi Arabia, where women have only recently been allowed to drive on their own. But Sudanese society is deeply conservative, and in addition to discriminatory laws, powerful societal roles such as judge or minister are entirely closed off to women.”

Thursday night Sudan’s government also dissolved the National Congress Party (NCP), Bashir’s political party and once a key vehicle for maintaining his iron grip on Sudanese life.

“The authorities hope that dismantling the NCP will help stop the old regime from undermining the transitional government,” Copall of the BBC wrote. The government can also now seize the NCP’s assets.

Military leaders took over after they pushed out Bashir in April, but the people continued to go to the streets demanding a civilian government be instated. In June, Sudanese security forces brutally cracked down on pro-democracy protests in what Human Rights Watch said this month may have amounted to a crime against humanity. Despite the prominent voice of women in the protests, they remained largely sidelined in meetings and discussions between protest leaders and the military.

In August, after many ups and downs, those military officers and civilian leaders agreed to a power-sharing deal that formed a transitional “sovereign council” to govern until elections are held in 2022.

The agreement also instated Hamdok, a former United Nations economist who represented a coalition of civilian and protest groups, to lead the transitional administration as prime minister.

“The three-plus-year period between now and the planned elections presents a chance for a new civilian leadership to continue chipping away at three decades of military-backed rule, or for the opposite: a further entrenchment of military rule, with perhaps less pressure from relentless street protests,” Bearak reported after the agreement was announced. “Many international observers remain skeptical of the prospects for a civilian-led democratic government in Sudan.”

Abouh is proud of how far Sudan has come – but unflinching in her criticism of how women are being shut out.

“I am not happy with the women’s participation now,” she said.

Women hold just two out of the 15 seats on the Supreme Council, she said. As half the population, they should also be half the ministers: Instead, there are only four female ministers out of 18 positions.

The problem, she said, is that men continue to nominate other men for powerful positions, while sidelining women’s rights.

The repeal of the public order law was “the minimum that could be done for the girls and the ladies of Sudan,” she said.

In the Caribbean, researchers are cultivating coral “nurseries” so they can reimplant fresh coral on degraded reefs. And in Hawaii, scientists are trying to specially breed corals to be more resilient against rising ocean temperatures.

On Friday, British and Australian researchers rolled out another unorthodox strategy that they say could help restoration efforts: broadcasting the sounds of healthy reefs in dying ones.

In a six-week field experiment, researchers placed underwater loudspeakers in patches of dead coral in Australia’s Great Barrier Reef and played audio recordings taken from healthy reefs. The goal was to see whether they could lure back the diverse communities of fish that are essential to counteracting reef degradation.

The results were promising, according to the researchers. The study, published in the journal Nature Communications, found that twice as many fish flocked to the dead coral patches where healthy reef sounds were played compared with the patches where no sound was played.

“Healthy coral reefs are remarkably noisy places – the crackle of snapping shrimp and the whoops and grunts of fish combine to form a dazzling biological soundscape,” said Steve Simpson, a marine biology professor at the University of Exeter and a senior author of the study. “Juvenile fish home in on these sounds when they’re looking for a place to settle.”

According to the study, the number of species present in the reef patches where healthy sounds were played increased by 50 percent over the other patches. The new fish populations included species from all parts of the food web, such as scavengers, herbivores and predatory fish. Importantly, the fish that arrived at the patches tended to stay there.

“Reefs become ghostly quiet when they are degraded, as the shrimps and fish disappear,” Simpson said, “but by using loudspeakers to restore this lost soundscape, we can attract young fish back again.”

The technique, if it can be replicated on larger scales, could offer scientists another tool to revive coral reefs around the world that have been ravaged by climate change, overfishing and pollution in recent years. Scientists have warned that climate change may already be accelerating too fast for some reefs to recover at all and that conservation efforts are not keeping pace with the devastation.

Severe coral bleaching triggered by extreme heat waves killed off 50 percent of the Great Barrier Reef, the planet’s largest coral reef, in 2016 and 2017. Such bleaching events – which occur when the nutrient-rich and color-providing algae that live in corals are expelled because of heat stress – are occurring four times as frequently as they did in the 1980s, as The Washington Post has reported.

The researchers worked from October through December 2017 in a lagoon in the northern part of the Great Barrier Reef that has a large, shallow reef that runs along the coastline.

At the start of fish recruitment season, when fish spawn and mature, the team built 33 experimental reef patches out of dead coral on open sand about 27 yards from the naturally occurring reef. They then fixed underwater loudspeakers to the center of the patches, angling them upward to ensure the sound was distributed in all directions evenly.

Over the course of 40 nights, the team played recordings from a healthy reef in some of the patches. In other patches, they used dummy speakers that emitted no sounds, and they left a third group of patches untouched.

The process, called “acoustic enrichment,” had a “significant positive impact on juvenile fish recruitment throughout the study period,” the researchers wrote. The acoustically enrich reefs attracted fish faster and maintained them longer than the reefs without a healthy soundtrack, according to the study.

The researchers acknowledged that drawing fish back to dead or dying reefs will not reverse the damage by itself. But degraded reefs have a better shot at recovery if they have robust populations of fish, which play a variety of roles in keeping the coral healthy.

“Fish are crucial for coral reefs to function as healthy ecosystems,” said the study’s lead author, Tim Gordon, of the University of Exeter. “Boosting fish populations in this way could help to kick-start natural recovery processes, counteracting the damage we’re seeing on many coral reefs around the world.”

This is the first December election in more than a century – Brits head to the polls on Dec. 12 – and it gets dark early here, shortly after 4 p.m. Some candidates are concerned about what they might encounter on the doorstep at a time when emotions around Brexit are running high.

The myth of absolute British politeness at all times has been punctured in recent months, with harsh language coming right from the top. In a particularly noxious parliamentary debate in September, Prime Minister Boris Johnson was widely criticized for using words such as “betray” and “surrender” to describe the actions of his rivals.

There have been signs of tension on the campaign trail. In the past week alone, a Labour Party volunteer in her 70s was thrown over the hood of a parked car in Herefordshire, and a 72-year-old Labour campaigner in South Yorkshire was taken to hospital with a suspected broken jaw.

Steffan Aquarone, who is running as a candidate for the Liberal Democrats in Norfolk, said in an interview that he recently knocked on a door at dusk and was told by a man that he would shoot him if he became a member of Parliament.

When the “gentleman who wasn’t very gentlemanly” made the remarks, Aquarone said it felt “personally threatening.”

“Because we’ve been requested to report any incidents like this to the police, I did. It actually hit me about 20 minutes after it happened, and I was quite shaken by this,” he said. (The next day, the “gentleman” reached out to apologize.)

For the first time in an election campaign, the National Police Chiefs’ Council issued security guidance for candidates, which recommend not to campaign alone and to keep records of any intimidating behavior or abuse.

For many candidates on the campaign trail, the murder of Jo Cox just days before the 2016 European Union referendum remains on their minds. The pro-E.U. Labour lawmaker died after she was repeatedly shot and stabbed on the street.

Cox’s sister, Kim Leadbeater, said in an interview that after her sister died, politicians promised to treat each other better, “but that didn’t last very long – over the last three years, it’s got progressively worse.”

“I’ve spoken to many MPs over the last three years who have had horrible abuse and intimidation, online and offline,” she said. “One MP was buying shampoo in the supermarket and was shouted at down the aisle, some have had their office windows smashed, some are out with children when they are shouted at. … I don’t want to be accused of scaremongering, but these are real things.”

In the wake of Cox’s death, the Metropolitan Police Service set up a special investigation squad to focus on crimes against lawmakers, staffers and families. In the year after Cox’s death, the unit received 111 reports of criminal threats; in 2018, it received 242, more than double. Cressida Dick, commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, has described the levels of abuse directed at lawmakers as “unprecedented” and a result of Britain’s growing polarization.

The abuse is not limited to one side of the Brexit debate, or to men or women. But researchers say that women and ethnic minorities are disproportionately targeted. In the last election, Diane Abbott, Britain’s first black female lawmaker, received almost half of all the abusive tweets sent to female members of Parliament.

Hillary Clinton, the 2016 U.S. Democratic presidential nominee, who was in London recently promoting her new book, told the BBC, “I’ve spoken to parliamentarians, current and former, in your country, who are genuinely afraid of all of the emotions and threats they see coming at them.”

Some of the lawmakers who stepped down in this election cited the abuse they receive as a contributing factor.

New research by Cardiff University and the University of Edinburgh found that a majority of those who voted for Brexit thought violence toward members of Parliament is a “price worth paying” for Brexit.

Richard Wyn Jones, co-director of the survey, said the results were “shocking and disappointing” and highlight “really staggering levels of polarization.”

He said that one factor that may be contributing to the “industrial quantities” of threats is that those on the losing side haven’t accepted defeat. And they haven’t accepted defeat, he said, because they feel they were “lied to, cheated and that the referendum was held under false pretenses.”

He added that on the winning side, “there was no attempt to reach out to the very, very large minority who voted a different way to say, ‘I hear your concerns, this is how we will assuage them.’ … Instead they are called ‘saboteurs’ or ‘remoaners’ or ‘traitors,’ and Brexit is redefined in an evermore hard-line way.”

Social media has amplified the problem, many say, with anonymity encouraging people to say things they otherwise wouldn’t. Some politicians have called for an end to anonymity; others are looking at new ways to encourage better manners online.

To be sure, politicians have long received threats and abuse, but many say it has become worse in recent years, especially for women.

Sam Smethers, chief executive of the Fawcett Society, an equal rights advocacy organization, said there has been an uptick in recent years of the number of female politicians prosecuting people for rape or death threats.

“It’s not just abuse and people not having a thick enough skin on social media. It’s actually a crossover between what people say online and what they are prepared to do offline,” she said.

Lawmaker Anna Soubry, who leads the Independent Group for Change and is well known for her views on Brexit, has received more abuse than most politicians. She recently received a letter at her office, written in all caps, that read: “COX WAS FIRST AND YOU’RE NEXT.”

One of the candidates running against her in the election was convicted of harassing her – she called her a “traitor” live on the BBC – and has been banned from visiting the constituency.

Soubry said that although she has received abuse since becoming a lawmaker in 2010, it grew worse after the Brexit referendum. She says what makes her “really cross” is that the incendiary language used by political leaders has encouraged others “to come out from the stone they clearly live under.”

Asked whether she has altered her behavior following the threats, she said, “I always keep a careful eye over my shoulder, wherever I am.”

The march in Tsim Sha Tsui on the Kowloon side of the city had a clear message: the five demands of the protest movement, including universal suffrage and an investigation into the Hong Kong police, are not to be forgotten.

Protesters, who included the elderly and children and some of whom were carrying banners calling for the end of the Chinese Communist Party, said their fight must go on despite several key successes for the movement.

Voters in district elections overwhelmingly chose pro-democracy candidates who now control 17 out of Hong Kong’s 18 electoral districts, widely seen as a resounding message of support for the pro-democracy cause. President Donald Trump has also signed into law a bill designed to support pro-democracy protesters after a huge bipartisan push.

“We feel better because of the election and the bill, but that’s not the end of the protest,” said Eric Chan, 33. “We need to bear in mind that we have a lot of demands which we cannot forget, and if we forget these demands, our friends, our comrades who have died or been prosecuted, their sacrifice would be for nothing.”

The rally was legal and approved by authorities, but some protesters appeared to veer off from the path sanctioned for their march. Others also hurled insults and made vulgar signs at the police, a continuation of deep tensions between many in Hong Kong and security forces which they believe are acting with impunity. By the late afternoon, shots of tear gas had been fired, sending the crowd scattering and coughing.

In a statement, police said the protesters did not follow the approved route and attacked officers.

“As some radical protesters passed by Mody Road Garden via Salisbury Road, they hurled bricks at Police officers. Police officers, in response, deployed the minimum necessary force, including tear gas, to stop their illegal acts,” according to the statement.

Protests were sparked back in June after a government proposal to allow extraditions to mainland China, in what many felt would mark an end to Hong Kong’s prized freedoms and autonomy. The government has since withdrawn that proposal, meeting one of the five demands of the protest movement.

The unrest has only grown, however, and revived a long-held demand for full, direct elections in the territory above the district level.

In recent months, protests have intensified and grown more violent. Mid-November saw a tense, new phase when demonstrators tried to fortify two university campuses against police raids – leading to an intense standoff at both.

At Polytechnic University, where protesters rained molotov cocktails and arrows down on police, authorities sealed off all entrances and warned protesters that anyone inside would be arrested and charged with rioting.

That led to daring, risky attempts at escape from bridges and sewers, while others barricaded themselves on campus. The siege finally ended this week and a cleanup has begun. Authorities say it could take up to six months.

That exceptionally dangerous new period, during which police had threatened to use live ammunition, has been followed by a stretch of peace in Hong Kong. Many saw the election as a rare opportunity for them to express their democratic will, and no tear gas was fired in any district for over a week until this weekend.

By sundown, police began clearing protesters gathering in the area and made several arrests.

“We have requested for a permit to hold the assembly and it won’t expire for a few hours, but they are already scaring us away,” said Kenton Cheung, 32, as police used their shields and batons to clear off peaceful demonstrators. “I don’t know what’s their intention, why they are always creating this intense environment in which we can’t express ourselves.”

He added: “Police have initiated this conflict, that’s why people have fought back.”

An independent investigation into the police conduct has been one of the main demands of protesters, with authorities countering that existing oversight mechanisms were sufficient to detect any problems. Chris Tang, the new commissioner of police who just took over this month, called any inquiry into police behavior “unjust.”

The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet published an opinion piece in the South China Morning Post Saturday urging an independent investigation into the charges of police brutality as part of an inclusive dialogue.

“I appeal to the government to take important confidence-building measures, including a proper independent and impartial judge-led investigation into reports of excessive use of force by the police,” she wrote.

China’s U.N. mission in Geneva on Sunday called the comments “inappropriate,” accused Bachelet of interference in the country’s internal affairs and said her article would only “embolden the rioters” to engage in more violence.

Law enforcement responded to the sound of gunshots around 3:21 a.m. Sunday near the French Quarter, where they found multiple people struck by gunfire, according to police.

Ten of the 11 victims were transported to local medical facilities for treatment. The eleventh victim walked in to a hospital on their own, police say.

Two people are reported to be in critical condition.

Police say they have detained a man near the crime scene, but no arrests have been made.

Twelve people were onboard midday Saturday when the plane went down in rural Brule County en route from Chamberlain to Idaho, Brule County State’s Attorney Theresa Maule Rossow said. Survivors were taken to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, for treatment. Details on their condition were not immediately available.

The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the crash of the Pilatus PC-12, but stormy weather is preventing officials from inspecting the scene, said agency spokesman Peter Knudson. The Federal Aviation Administration also has been notified, according to Maule Rossow.

“The men and women of law enforcement, first responders and medical professionals should be commended in their heroic actions to rescue the victims in extreme weather conditions,” she said in a statement.

Chamberlain and other parts of South Dakota are under a winter storm warning that will last until noon Sunday, according to the National Weather Service in Sioux Falls. The Weather Service warned of ice, snow and winds as fast as 40 mph, as stormy weather across the country is predicted to hit millions of travelers returning home after Thanksgiving.

Conditions in Chamberlain could hinder travel, and “patchy blowing snow could significantly reduce visibility,” the Weather Service advisory states.

All people onboard the downed plane were from Idaho, Maule Rossow said.

A final report analyzing the cause of the crash could take one to two years, but a preliminary report will be out within two weeks, according to Knudson.

As more details emerged about Friday’s deadly knifings – carried out, police said, by 28-year-old Usman Khan, previously convicted and jailed for a terrorism plot – new profiles in courage appeared in the British press. They were bolstered by amateur video clips, witness statements and paeans by the London mayor and the British prime minister.

British media reports also said that one of the people who intervened in the attack is a convicted murderer.

The intervention of several members of the public appears to have stopped the attack from being far worse, witnesses said, as Khan was seen running onto London Bridge with a large knife in his hands.

He was then confronted by at least three men. One jabbed with the decorative narwhal tusk. Another let loose a spray from a fire extinguisher. A third used his fists and feet.

The attacker was later shot and killed by police.

Queen Elizabeth II, in a statement, praised their bravery. “I express my enduring thanks to the police and emergency services, as well as the brave individuals who put their own lives at risk to selflessly help and protect others,” she said.

The mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, no relation to the dead attacker, said he was in “awe of the people who ran toward danger to keep us all safe.”

Asked about reports that one of the defenders was from Poland – whose identity has not been made public – the mayor confirmed he was a Londoner of Polish origin.

“One of the great things about London is its diversity, so I’m not surprised at all. When I say ‘the best of us,’ I include E.U. citizens as well,” the mayor said.

Many social media posts also pointed out that campaigners for Brexit used stereotypes such as the “Polish plumber” and other tropes about workers coming to Britain from across the European Union.

British Transport Police said Saturday that another man widely seen in social media videos carrying away a large, bloody knife seized from the assailant was a plainclothes police officer who helped detain the suspect. The police asked that the news and social media obscure his image and do not name him.

It all began just before 2 p.m. Friday, when Khan allegedly entered the historic Fishmongers’ Hall beside the London Bridge.

Police said Khan was attending an event hosted by Learning Together – a Cambridge University-backed program that works to reeducate and socialize prisoners – when he launched the attack.

In dramatic footage shared widely online, three individuals – the one wielding the tusk, the one with the fire extinguisher, and the one who was seemingly armed with nothing but quick reflexes – brought the attacker to the ground.

The assailant was shot dead after he fatally stabbed a man and a woman. Three others were wounded.

The assailant was wearing what appeared to witnesses as a “suicide vest.” London’s mayor pointed out on the BBC that they would have had no clue at the time that the explosives were fake.

“They had no idea whether this man had a bomb you could detonate by pressing a button, they had no idea how many other people were involved,” he said. “What do they do? They run toward him.”

The man with the narwhal tusk was identified only by the name Luckasz, according to British newspaper the Times, which contacted his colleague. Poles on social media pointed out that his name was likely spelled Lukasz.

He reportedly took the tusk from a wall in Fishmongers’ Hall, where the Times said he works setting up events and managing porters.

A narwhals is a type of whale sometimes called “the unicorn of the sea” for its distinctively long tusk.

The Polish man’s colleague told the Times: “Being stabbed didn’t stop him giving him a beating. Luckasz is a hero.” He was “cut in the hand but not in critical condition.”

Many on Twitter pointed out that the man was a European Union citizen and praised immigrants. Others suggested the act could help unite the country.

One person wrote, “If a Polish chef attacking a terrorist with a whale horn can’t unite our country I don’t know what can.”

Meanwhile, several British media outlets reported that another man who helped subdue the attacker was 42-year-old James Ford, who was jailed for life in 2004 for the murder of 21-year-old Amanda Champion, who had learning difficulties.

According to British media reports, Ford was believed to be serving the final days of his sentence at an open prison in Kent and was on London Bridge as the attack unfolded and that he was attending the same conference as the attacker.

“He is not a hero. He is a murderer out on day release, which us as a family didn’t know anything about. He murdered a disabled girl. He is not a hero, absolutely not,” Champion’s aunt, Angela Cox, told the Daily Mail on Friday. “I don’t care what he’s done today, he’s a murderer.”

It was the not the first time that bystanders have fought back against terrorism.

In August – in a video shared to Twitter and viewed more than 4 million times – people used chairs and a milk crate to trap a man during a stabbing rampage in Sydney.