During the past 40 years, Beijing’s maternal and infant mortality rates have both experienced a significant downfall, dropping by 68 percent and 88 percent respectively, according to the latest data.

In 2018, the average life expectancy of Beijing’s women reached 84.63 years, up 12.37 years compared with 1979.

In 2018, the infant mortality rate of Beijing’s registered permanent residents was 2.01 per thousand, while the mortality rate of children under 5 years old was 2.69 per thousand, reaching the level of developed countries.

Beijing has shown a declining rate of serious birth defects, with the prevention rate reaching more than 70 percent. The occurrence rate of neural tube defects has dropped from 1.01 per thousand in 2011 to 0.67 per thousand in 2018.

In addition, the children’s health protection network has been launched, which includes the timely referral of critically ill newborns, improved premature infant health services, and child fatality prevention based on common causes of infant death.

Early childhood comprehensive development services have also been strengthened through establishing networks of eyesight, oral health and mental care services.

At present, there are one municipal and 16 district-level maternal and child care service centers and more than 120 midwifery agencies in Beijing. The city also boasts 11 municipal treatment centers for critical pregnant patients and seven such centers for critically ill newborns. At the grassroots level, more than 300 primary medical institutions offer maternal and child healthcare services.

Police clashed with anti-extradition law protesters in Sha Tin on Sunday — the second such demonstration in two days — forcing most shops in two major shopping centers in the district to shut down, and more than 40 bus routes to be suspended or diverted.

According to a China Daily reporter at the scene, about 40 percent of the shops along the protest route had to close, as well as a public swimming pool and several public sports facilities.

Protesters resorted to prying bricks off pavements and putting up makeshift barricades by dismantling railings from sidewalks to fend off the police, as masked protesters used umbrellas to prevent themselves from being filmed by the media.

By 5 pm, a large number of protesters, who came fully prepared with goggles and masks, had deviated from the main crowd of peaceful protesters and tried to occupy one of the roads.

The Sha Tin protest came a day after thousands of people marched against parallel traders in the northern district of Sheung Shui. Violent scenes erupted when radical masked protesters used iron poles in battling with the police, and some assaulted officers using powdery substances, leading to 16 officers being injured. Several shops were forced to close early, and some vandalized.

“The protesters were highly organized and a large amount of equipment was distributed,” the police said in a statement issued after the clashes.

In an open letter to the public, the Hong Kong Police Inspectors’ Association — one of the four police groups — said the series of protests in the past few weeks have undermined the city’s rule of law, and have gone out of control. It said police officers were challenged, pushed and even attacked while trying to deal with the demonstrations.

Appealing for a return of peace and order in society, the association urged the public to support the police in carrying out their duties under the law.

The guerilla-styled protests in the past few weeks have strained police manpower, with many more planned in almost every ensuing week, according to information distributed online.

The association said officers, although having worked overtime and hurled with baseless accusations, pledged to continue serving Hong Kong.

Several media groups also took to the streets on Sunday to demand press freedom. In response, Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor and the police said they have all along respected press freedom and the media’s right of reporting.

Calling it an “unprecedented” situation, the police advised members of the media to take care of their personal safety, especially during chaotic and dangerous scenes when protesters clash violently with the police.

Dao Duy Nam, a junior student at Hanoi University of Science and Technology, says that he filmed the old woman to share her story online on TikTok.

“I hope that people will see it and come and give her some donations,” Nam says, adding that many disadvantaged people were offered help after similar videos went viral on the platform.

TikTok, known as Douyin in China and developed by Beijing-based startup Bytedance, is an app for making and sharing short videos, generally from 15 to 60 seconds long. The videos are usually set to music, often featuring someone cooking, dancing, doing a trick, or lip-syncing.

Globally, TikTok was the third most downloaded app in the first quarter of this year, according to the United States-based market research firm, Sensor Tower.

Vietnam is among the fastest growing Southeast Asian markets for TikTok users, with the platform registering 12 million regular users by the end of March. It has more than 1,000 official content creators, according to Nguyen Lam Thanh, policy director of TikTok Vietnam.

Thanh says his company wants to triple the number of official content creators to 3,000 by the end of this year.

As of late 2018, each Vietnamese user spent an average of 28 minutes per day on TikTok, with the hours between 6 pm and 8 pm on Fridays and Saturdays recording the most site visits, according to the company.

“Watching TikTok videos is my daily hobby,” says Trinh Thi Khanh Ngoc, a college student in Hanoi, before adding that she has been cutting down time spent on Facebook and YouTube and switching to Tik-Tok, just like many of her friends.

Just after downloading and opening TikTok, videos that TikTok chooses to highlight will start playing automatically. Users can see content straight away under the “For You” tab.

“You don’t need to follow anyone at first, TikTok will fill your ‘feed’ before you’ve connected with a single person. Meanwhile, on Facebook, it can seem very empty if you don’t have a few hundred friends,” Ngoc says.

Later, if users would like to watch videos from people they like on Tik-Tok, they can switch to “following “them or continue to check out videos from popular users or any other Tik-Toker who amuses them.

According to Ngoc, videos on Tik-Tok are more lively and diverse, and more entertaining for young people compared to those on other social media platforms.

“It’s also very easy to navigate through the videos, just by scrolling up and down, not by tapping or swiping side to side,” she says, while surfing through some of her favorites about make-up tips and fashion, among others.

“You can also see what’s trending in other countries, including China and South Korea. It brings you the feeling of international integration,” Ngoc states.

Thanks to its popularity, TikTok is helping to create and spread positive trends in Vietnam, with hashtags playing a large role by encouraging various online “challenges”, jokes or repeat formats.

For instance, the hashtag #Hello-Vietnam is helping to promote tourism as part of a marketing program in partnership with the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism. The organization aims to produce and screen around 30,000 short videos on the TikTok platform with a target of reaching 100 million views.

On June 15, TikTok released the first video of the series under the hashtag#HelloDanang, introducing tourist attractions in Vietnam’s central city of Da Nang. After just over six months, hundreds of videos have been uploaded and have attracted 72.5 million views.

Another trending hashtag on Vietnam’s TikTok currently is #Ketromnhua, which means “plastic thief” in English. The trend calls for users to make and share videos on how they reduce, reuse, recycle and replace plastic items, or take part in campaigns to clean up piles of rubbish that blight the community.

“These videos show us the real efforts people are making toward achieving a greener lifestyle,” Ngoc says.

In a class in June at the Indonesia University of Education in Sumedang, Western Java, about 50 students sketched characters from manga series such as “Astroboy,” “Chibi Maruko-chan” and “Captain Tsubasa,” while writing the titles of the manga in Japanese next to their illustrations.

Andi Aripin, 21, drew a portrait of the main character from “Yowamushi Pedal,” a popular manga series about bicycle racing, before writing the title in Japanese.

“I wrote the Japanese word ‘yowamushi’ for the first time. I found it difficult to write the kanji,” Aripin said, smiling wryly.

The idea for the class was proposed by the International Foundation of Educational and Cultural Exchange, a Kyoto-based general incorporated foundation that promotes the acceptance of foreign workers, for students planning one-year internships at nursing homes in Japan. The proposal was then adopted by the university.

The class is held irregularly when a Japanese lecturer visits the college.

The Economy, Trade and Industry Ministry lobbied copyright management organizations to allow using some of the manga illustrations for the classes.

After completing their internships, the students aim to find jobs in Japan as laborers with specific skills — a new residence status created as part of the framework for accepting more foreign workers into Japan.

“[Using manga as class material], I was able to attract students’ attention,” said Hiroshi Okochi, 52, an adviser to the foundation and lecturer for the class. Other inquiries have also been made about starting the class.

Japanese is considered a difficult language for foreigners to learn due to the vast number of kanji and complexity of the grammar. In the Japanese-Language Proficiency Test held last December, only 35 percent of test-takers passed the exam for the N4 level, which requires the ability to understand basic Japanese and is considered necessary for those who work in Japan.

Amid such challenges, manga is expected to be used worldwide to help students learn Japanese.

The ministry is backing the initiative with a view to further boosting the popularity of Japanese manga, which already enjoys a fan base overseas.

“This will be a new approach for broadening the base of manga readers,” said Junichiro Mimaki, director of the Cool Japan Policy Division.

The premier’s remark came in a tweet accompanied by a four-year-old news article about a testimony given by former Italian president Giorgio Napolitano during a trial regarding bombings carried out by mobsters in the 1990s.

In a similar vein to the “Sicilian mafia”, the Pakistani mafia uses tactics of bribe, threat, blackmail and begging to pressurise state institutions and judiciary in order to protect their billions of money laundering stashed

“In a similar vein to the ‘Sicilian mafia’, the Pakistani mafia uses tactics of bribe, threat, blackmail and begging to pressurise state institutions and judiciary in order to protect their billions of money laundering stashed abroad,” Prime Minister Imran wrote on Twitter today.

Although the premier did not name any individual or political party, his observation comes a day after accountability judge Arshad Malik claimed in an affidavit that he was offered a Rs500 million cash bribe by the son of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, Hussain Nawaz, who demanded that the judge resign on the grounds that he “could no longer deal with the guilt of having convicted” Nawaz under duress in the Al-Azizia/Hill Metal Establishment reference in December 2018.

On July 6, PML-N vice president Maryam Nawaz had opened a Pandora’s box with a startling claim that judge Malik had “confessed” that he had been “pressurised and blackmailed” to convict her father in the Al-Azizia reference. A video containing the judge’s alleged confession during his conversation with a ‘sympathiser’ of the PML-N, Nasir Butt, was screened at a presser. The next day, the judge had denied the allegation and being under any pressure, but admitted that Butt was an acquaintance.

On Saturday, Maryam was quick to hit back at the prime minister’s insinuation that members of the country’s opposition acted as a “mafia”.

“You’re a part of the mafia that pressurises judges into targeting & punishing your political opponents. It is you who used the institutions to settle scores with your opponents & defaced & maligned them in the process. Shame on you,” she wrote, addressing Imran.

You’re a part of the mafia that pressurises judges into targeting & punishing your political opponents. It is you who used the institutions to settle scores with your opponents & defaced & maligned them in the process. Shame on you.

In a similar vein to the “Sicilian mafia”, the Pakistani mafia uses tactics of bribe, threat, blackmail and begging to pressurise state institutions and judiciary in order to protect their billions of money laundering stashed abroad,” Prime Minister Imran wrote on Twitter today

In a second tweet in Urdu, she alleged that the prime minister was “part of the heinous conspiracy that was staged to punish Nawaz Sharif and keep him out of the field”.

She further alleged that judge Malik had exposed the premier through his alleged confession.

“Don’t hide behind your elders now,” the PML-N leader told the prime minister.

This was the message from young game-changers across the Asia-Pacific who spoke in Hong Kong on July 12 at the Forbes Under 30 Summit Asia. The three-day event, which ends on July 13, includes motivational panels, tech presentations, and the opportunity to network.

The Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia list this year included 61 entrepreneurs from the Chinese mainland and 11 from Hong Kong. Ten industries were included, and most of the mainland’s top young entrepreneurs  — 11 in all — were in the consumer technology sector

The Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia list this year included 61 entrepreneurs from the Chinese mainland and 11 from Hong Kong. Ten industries were included, and most of the mainland’s top young entrepreneurs  — 11 in all — were in the consumer technology sector.

The list features 300 CEOs, mentors and industry leaders under 30 years old across 10 categories in 23 countries and territories in the Asia-Pacific. Honorees are vetted by a panel of expert judges in their respective fields who consider leadership, innovation in their respective fields, entrepreneurial mindset and results, and the likelihood of changing their field over the next half-century.

Eric Gnock Fah, co-founder of Hong Kong travel-experience booking startup Klook Travel and an honoree of Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia in 2017, said the drivers of their success are Asia-based talent groups and investment from the Asia-Pacific region.

Fah said that half the Klook team is based in China, and the global research and development center is in Shenzhen, where China’s largest high-tech companies are located.

Based in Hong Kong, Fah sees a dominant tourism-market position here as key to further strengthening the Asia market while expanding the business to Europe and the US.

In April, Klook closed a US$225 million fundraising led by Vision Fund, and to date, the startup has raised US$425 million in a Series D funding round.

Also at the event, Chinese smartphone manufacturer OnePlus Technology, which launched the first commercial 5G handset in the UK early in May, displayed its 5G smartphone.

The handsets have become very popular outside China, especially in the US. In October, the smartphone manufacturer partnered with US carrier T-Mobile, further tapping into the market.

OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei Yu said it took some time for the public to leverage 4G data, and for OnePlus, it’s essential that it jump on the technology wave quickly.

OnePlus has held offline events overseas to further engage the customers. Pei said that in 2017, it gathered British customers who were unsatisfied with their phones to seek ideas for improving them.

In a few months, people expect to see private jets, fish runs (small planes delivering fresh marine products from the provinces), and cargo planes in and out of a peninsula jutting out into the Manila Bay and inhabited by at least 100,000.

It may handle domestic flights, too, in the future, plus a point-to-point passenger bus service and ferry trips that will reduce the 27-kilometer distance between Sangley and SM Mall of Asia in Pasay City into a mere 18-to-24 minute drive.

Intent of meeting deadline

But expansion, other than the 3.6-hectare general aviation airport currently under construction, remains to be seen, with everyone intent on meeting the November deadline set by President Rodrigo Duterte.

“Right now, our concentration is really just on building this [airport],” said Gil Pamatmat, project management officer of the Department of Transportation (DOTr), the agency implementing the Sangley airport project.

According to Malacañang, the President is “in a hurry” to transfer domestic flights out of Ninoy Aquino International Airport (Naia), the country’s main gateway. A lightning storm that struck and delayed dozens of flights at Naia in June seemed to have been the main spark to speed up construction.

The transfer had to be done  months earlier than the supposed target date of March 2020. Since last month, between 40 and 70 personnel have been working day and night, and government officials are optimistic they can finish the project on time.

Duterte’s rush job: P486-M Sangley AirportThe DOTr said passenger traffic at Naia already reached 45 million last year, way above the airport’s designed capacity of 30.5 million.

To help ease congestion at Naia, Sangley will have to cater to general aviation or noncommercial aircraft, freight turboprops and commercial turboprops, the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines (Caap) said.

“It’s really the call of the airlines [to relocate],” said Eric Apolonio, spokesperson for the state aviation agency.

Companies like Philippine Airlines, AirAsia and Cebu Pacific have recently committed to moving their turboprops to Sangley.

There are about 50 flights of general aviation a day at Naia, competing with the bigger planes for runway time and terminal slots at the airport, according to Caap.

Giovanni Lopez, DOTr assistant secretary for procurement and project implementation, said the President’s “marching orders” to build Sangley airport in order to decongest Naia were clear.

Tugade instruction

Quoting Transport Secretary Arthur Tugade’s instructions to “expedite [construction] without sacrificing safety,” Lopez said he and his staff would comply though they were “a bit surprised” by the rush.

Unimasters Conglomeration Inc., the same company that improved the Calbayog City airport in Samar province, is “very supportive” of the government’s move to fast-track the project, he said.

As “proof of compliance,” Unimasters has increased its manpower and equipment without charging additional costs to the government.

Rehabilitation

As of June 13, 53 percent of the project had been accomplished, according to the DOTr.

HALFWAY DONE One of the two hangars under construction at the Sangley site. According to the Department of Transportation, the airport project is 53-percent complete.

The project, funded through the 2017 General Appropriations Act, involves the construction of two hangars, a maintenance building, a powerhouse, a pumping station, two cistern tanks, two guardhouses and a passenger terminal building with a seating capacity of 160.

It will fortify an existing seawall, install a drainage system, and put up perimeter fences around the airport nestled in a low-to-average-income neighborhood and military housing.

The apron (30,000 square meters) can accommodate six turboprops at any given time, Lopez said.

Pipeline project

The single 2.4-km runway, built by the Americans after World War II, has been “rehabilitated” with a fresh asphalt overlay. For now, it can only accommodate the 70- to 80-seater Q400s or ATR 72-500s and 72-600s jets.

While it can handle Airbus 320, normally used to carry passengers, Caap said airlines might have issues landing them at Sangley.

Once completed, the Sangley airport, one of the “pipeline projects” of the Duterte administration, is comparable with the San Vicente airport in northern Palawan province, which opened last year. It may  be one of the fastest built among the 17 airports expanded or improved so far under this administration.

Actual construction, which started only on Jan. 17, was delayed for nearly a year as the contractor needed first to clear away heaps of garbage, 70,948.49 cubic meters to be exact.

The trash might have come from residential areas or swept in from the Manila Bay. “In most parts, the garbage pile was taller than an average person’s height,” Lopez said.

Land swap

The airport site (3.6 ha) occupies only a fraction of the 138-ha Sangley Naval Air Base that sprawls across two villages, Yakal A and B. It was also the same site used for the shelved Santa Barbara missile project of dictator Ferdinand Marcos.

In September 1971, a letter from the US Embassy formalized the turnover of the military base to the Philippine government, ending 73 years of American presence in this city.

The Philippine Navy’s Fleet Command, its headquarters called the Heracleo Alano Naval Station, has since occupied Sangley along with the 15th Strike Wing of the Philippine Air Force (PAF). In 1992, the PAF base was renamed Major Danilo Atienza Air Base, after a squadron leader whose plane crashed during the 1989 coup attempt.

‘Historically’ significant

The two military units also share the runway, particularly for training flights.

Capt. Marc Aerone Paul Imperio, Naval Installation Command spokesperson, said the Sangley base was not only “strategically” important for the military but also “historically” significant for Cavite City.

“There are a lot of really old buildings, some built way back the American-Spanish time. [Sangley] also houses El Varadero [de Manila], the oldest dry dock in Asia,” he said, noting that the area could be a “tourist spot at the doors of an airport.”

In 2012, the government came up with an interagency agreement to “swap” the Major Danilo Atienza Air Base (70 ha) with the old Lumbia Airport (113 ha) in Cagayan de Oro City.

Long overdue

The land deal, which came with a P1-billion “replication” fund, allowed the PAF to start relocating its base after airport operations were transferred from Lumbia to Laguindingan town in Misamis Oriental province in 2013.

Once the PAF moves out of Sangley, there will be more room for airport expansion, although Pamatmat, the project management officer, said this might not happen anytime soon as construction at Lumbia was still ongoing.

He said there were also plans to take 8 ha off the Navy’s property.

Construction of the Sangley airport may take only 10 months, but it took two decades, five presidents and proposals on and off the table before things got into full swing.

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Liza Mazo, regional director of the Office of Civil Defense-Caraga, said many of the injured and damage to properties were reported in the towns of Madrid, Lanuza, Cantilan, Carmen and Carrascal at the northern tip of the province where the epicenter was located.

In Madrid, 25 residents suffered injuries and were brought to the district hospital for treatment, said Adel de Guzman, chief of Surigao del Sur’s Provincial Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office.

Caught off guard

The hospital itself was damaged as portions of its roof collapsed, De Guzman added.

“[The victims] were caught off guard. We have reports of injuries caused by toppled cabinets, broken glass and collapsing walls,” De Guzman said, noting that most of those injured were still in bed when the quake hit.

Market share for Lenovo stood at 25 percent with a shipment of 15.77 million units, followed by 22.2 percent for HP, 16.9 percent for Dell and 5.9 percent for Apple.

Lenovo also recorded the fastest year-over-year growth of 15.9 percent and the largest share gain among the top vendors, said the report.

The worldwide PC market saw a 1.5 percent growth in the second quarter of 2019 after two quarters of decline, according Gartner, and PC shipments totaled 63 million units at the same time, up from 62 million units compared with a year earlier.

The demand from the Windows 10 operating system replacements in the business market, improved condition for Intel CPU shortage, all contributed the shipments growth, according to Mikako Kitagawa, a senior principal analyst at Gartner.

According to Ha, Japan made more than 30 shipments of hydrogen fluoride, materials for biochemical weapon development and other strategic items to North Korea between 1996 and 2003. Strategic items refer to goods and technologies regulated from exports, to maintain national security and international peace.

Ha cited a document by the Centre for Information on Security Trade Control, or CISTEC, a Tokyo-based non-governmental and non-profit organization that conducts research and analyses on peace and security issues related to Japan’s exports.

“Recently some Japanese have made a fallacious argument alleging South Korea smuggled out hydrogen fluoride used in nuclear weapons, citing South Korean government documents. But Japan’s (CISTEC) document reports Japan being caught after attempting to illegally export hydrogen fluoride to North Korea. This is expected to have repercussions,” said Ha, a member of the National Assembly’s National Defence Committee, in a press conference held Thursday at the National Assembly.

“Amid worsening South Korea and Japan relations, Japan should stop responding emotionally. If it continues to make fallacious claims, Japan will find itself isolated from the international community. Japan should also immediately rescind unfair export restrictions,” Ha added.

Ha said 50 kilograms of sodium fluoride were shipped via a North Korean ship from a port in Osaka in January 1996. In the following month, 50 kg of hydrogen fluoride and hydrofluoric acid each were illegally exported to North Korea via a North Korean ship docked at Kobe.

“Hydrofluoric acid and sodium fluoride are subject to export regulations because they can function as base materials for murder. These were unlawful exports misusing North Korean ships that should have been used to send emergency rice aid to the North,” Ha said.

Earlier this week Japan’s Fuji TV broadcast a report alleging South Korea made 156 unlawful shipments of strategic items in the past four years, saying that this justifies Japan’s latest curbs on exports of high-tech materials to South Korea.

However, the report appears to have taken information out of context, as the cited government document actually showed that the South Korean Trade Ministry had found 156 cases of illegal exports of strategic items to North Korea during crackdowns in the past four years.

“There is no evidence that Japanese hydrogen fluoride was sent to North Korea. Japan should stop groundless criticism and bring forth hard evidence to support suspicions it has raised,” said Park Tae-sung, chief of trade and investment at the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy.

“Some Japanese news outlets are casting doubt on the effectiveness (of Korea’s export control system), saying the Korean government has caught many unauthorised exports. But this is due to the increased number of monitoring personnel.”

Describing South Korea as having an “exemplary export control system,” Park added the US government, known for its strict export control system, also uncovers many cases of unauthorized exports and that only Japan has raised the issue with Korea.