Koran-burning in Stockholm draws strong condemnation from Turkey
SUNDAY, JANUARY 22, 2023
Hundreds of protesters gathered in front of the Swedish consulate in Istanbul and set the Swedish flag ablaze on Saturday.
Riot police who took security measures around the consulate building had stopped protesters trying to damage the entrance of the building.
In a separate protest in Ankara, the crowd gathered in front of the Swedish embassy and left a black wreath in front of the embassy building with the inscription “Say Stop to Islamophobia“.
Protests in Stockholm on Saturday against Turkey and Sweden‘s bid to join Nato, including the burning of a copy of the Koran, sharply heightened tensions with Turkey at a time when the Nordic country needs Ankara’s backing to gain entry to the military alliance.
Rasmus Paludan, a Danish anti-immigration politician burned a copy of the Koran outside the Turkish embassy in Stockholm on Saturday.
Paludan, leader of the fringe political party Hard Line, torched a copy of the Islamic holy book. The police permit for the demonstration said it was against Islam and what it called Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan‘s attempt to influence freedom of expression in Sweden.
Paludan could not immediately be reached by email for comment. In the permit he obtained from police, it says his protest was held against Islam and what it called Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan’s attempt to influence freedom of expression in Sweden.
A separate protest took place in Stockholm supporting Kurds and against Sweden’s bid to join Nato. A group of pro-Turkish demonstrators also held a rally outside the embassy. All three events had police permits
The Koran burning sparked a protest outside Sweden’s embassy in Ankara, where dozens took part in a demonstration organised by Turkey’s New Welfare Party.
Swedish Foreign Minister Tobias Billstrom said on Twitter on Saturday that Islamophobic provocations were appalling,
Sweden and Finland applied last year to join Nato following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine but all 30 member states must approve their bids. Turkey has said Sweden in particular must first take a clearer stance against what it sees as terrorists, mainly Kurdish militants and a group it blames for a 2016 coup attempt.
Chinese families ring in a restrictons-free Lunar New Year
SUNDAY, JANUARY 22, 2023
For the first time in two years without covid-19 restrictions, Chinese families gathered on Saturday for the traditional Lunar new year’s eve dinner.
“The pandemic is gone, for the new year I wish everybody prosperous business, health, and to restore production,” said dinner guest Guo Jin, celebrating at the Shangri-La Hotel in Beijing with his family.
“Last year everybody went through a lot and also difficult moments,” said businesswoman Liu Zhuoran, while having dinner with her family. “But we managed to handle it pretty well. Now we have to keep putting effort in it and our lives will be better and better,” she said.
The mass movement of people during the ongoing Lunar New Year holiday period may spread the pandemic, boosting infections in some areas, but a second Covid wave is unlikely in the near term, Wu Zunyou, chief epidemiologist at the China Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said on the Weibo social media platform.
Hundreds of millions of Chinese are travelling across the country for holiday reunions that had been suspended under recently eased Covid curbs, raising fears of fresh outbreaks in rural areas less equipped to manage large outbreaks.
Private clinics baffled by government move to restrict handing out of key AIDS medicines
In December, the Health Ministry issued a decree that private clinics could no longer hand out PrEP and PEP medicines, which are used as drugs to reduce the chances of contracting HIV from sex or drug use.
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The move by the ministry has created an obstacle for patients and added to the workload of many public hospitals.
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The Rainbow Sky Association is one of many private clinics providing healthcare services, such as blood tests for STDs and giving out PEP and PrEP drugs, following Thailand’s national strategy to end AIDS by 2030.
Nato allies pledge more arms for Ukraine, Germany holds out on tanks
FRIDAY, JANUARY 20, 2023
Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Thursday said he was “expecting strong decisions” when dozens of defence ministers meet at an airbase in Germany on Friday.
“We are expecting a powerful military aid package from the US,” he said in his nightly video address.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization and defence leaders from roughly 50 countries will confer at Ramstein Air Base, the latest in a series of meetings since Russia invaded Ukraine nearly 11 months ago.
The focus is expected to be not on what the United States will provide, but on whether Germany will send its Leopard battle tanks to Ukraine or at least approve their transfer from third countries.
Polish PM ‘pessimistic’ about German permission for Leopard tank transfer to Ukraine
Poland’s prime minister said on Thursday he was “moderately pessimistic” about Germany giving other countries permission to re-export Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine.
“I am moderately sceptical, moderately pessimistic because the Germans are defending themselves against this like a devil protects himself against holy water”, Mateusz Morawiecki told reporters.
Fearing winter will give Russian forces time to regroup and unleash a major attack, Ukraine is pushing for the Leopard battle tanks, which are held by an array of Nato nations but whose transfer to Ukraine requires Germany’s approval.
A German government source said Berlin would lift its objections if Washington sends its own Abrams tanks.
Poland and Finland have already said they would send Leopards if Germany lifts its veto. In a sign of mounting frustration, Poland suggested it might do so even if Germany tries to block it.
Fear of nuclear war is the reason for Scholz’s hesitancy to send Leopard tanks to Ukraine – analyst
Enormous fear of a nuclear war is the reason why German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has so far blocked allies from sending its Leopard 2 tanks, a military analyst and former Austrian defence ministry official Gustav Gressel said on Thursday.
Speaking to Reuters in Berlin, Gressel said “the chancellery” believed it was the “prime target. I don’t know how this strange perception came about.”
“I have a bit of an impression that Scholz has lost sight of the fact that Germany is actually a part of the Nato alliance. He’s mentally not Westbound,” said Gressel who served five years in the Austrian Armed Forces.
Washington and many Western allies say the Leopards – which Germany made in the thousands during the Cold War and exported to its allies – are the only suitable option available in big enough numbers.
A German government source said Berlin would lift its objections if Washington sends its own Abrams tanks. But US officials say they have no plans yet to send the Abrams, which runs on powerful turbine engines seen as using too much fuel for Kyiv’s strained logistics system to supply at the front.
Tanks important for Ukraine to match enemy, Nato military chief says
A senior Nato military commander said on Thursday that tanks were important for Ukraine to be a match for Russia, amid protracted discussions among Western allies over whether to supply German-made tanks to Kyiv.
“I think in terms of matching what the enemy has it is important for the Ukrainians,” the head of the Nato Military Committee Admiral Rob Bauer told reporters after a two-day meeting in Brussels.
Fearing winter will give Russia time to regroup and launch a major attack, Ukraine is pushing for Leopard battle tanks.
Supreme Allied Commander Europe, General Christopher Cavoli, said that Western technology was outperforming Russian technology in the war but cautioned that tanks alone were not the solution.
“It’s not just tank on tank, it’s the whole system, it’s the supplies, it’s the logistics system, it’s the maintenance system, it’s the target-finding capability and all of that comes together. So the complex of an army is much more important than any one of its individual parts,” he said.
Netherlands finalising Patriot system plan for Ukraine, to announce more support
The Netherlands is finalising plans to provide Patriot air missile defence systems to Ukraine with Germany and the United States and will announce further military support to Kyiv on Friday, Defence Minister Kajsa Ollongren said on Thursday.
Dozens of Ukraine’s allies meet on Friday at a US army base in Ramstein, Germany, with billions of dollars in new weapons to be pledged.
“We are joining the United States, and Germany in their project to provide Patriots to Ukraine,” Ollongren told Reuters in an interview on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “We are working out details and will provide details in Ramstein.”
When asked whether that meant the Netherlands would provide spare parts, missiles or the system, she said the details were still being debated.
“What they need right now in this phase of the war is weapons to push the Russians back from the invaded parts of the country and more air defence because these attacks are still going on,” she said, adding that the Netherlands would make announcements tomorrow.
A major question mark remains on whether German-made Leopard battle tanks, which are held by an array of Nato nations, but whose transfer to Ukraine requires Germany’s approval, will be on the table tomorrow. Germany has so far held back.
Ollongren said she was confident a solution would be found for supplying modern battle tanks, but that the Netherlands, which leases Leopard 2 tanks from Germany, would need a green light from Berlin before deciding whether to contribute.
Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev warned Nato on Thursday that a defeat of Russia in Ukraine could trigger a nuclear war.
“I’m not that much concerned about nuclear escalation. I think that (Russian President Vladimir) Putin and the Russian leadership knows that if you go there, you accept the possibility of total destruction and I don’t think that’s a risk they want to take,” Ollongren said.
Estonia to send $122 mln arms package to Ukraine
Estonia will send military equipment to Ukraine worth some 113 million euros ($122 million) in its latest package of support for the war against Russia, the Baltic country’s defence minister said on Thursday (January 19).
“What Ukrainians need most is heavy weaponry”, Estonian Defence Minister Hanno Pevkur told a joint news conference with his British counterpart and others.
Estonia, Britain and nine other countries pledged a raft of new military aid for Ukraine, in a joint statement signed by Pevkur, British defence Secretary Ben Wallace and others on Thursday ahead of a crunch meeting on arms for Kyiv scheduled to take place in Germany on Friday.
Fearing winter will give Russian forces time to regroup and unleash a major attack, Ukraine is pushing for German-made Leopard battle tanks, which are held by an array of Nato nations but whose transfer to Ukraine requires Germany’s approval.
Lithuanian defence minister Arvydas Anusauskas said he supported a British offer of a squadron from its fleet of Challenger tanks and said he hoped other nations would follow suit, without naming any country directly.
Poland and Finland have already said they would send Leopards if Germany lifts its veto. In a sign of mounting frustration, Poland suggested it might do so even if Germany tries to block it.
Sweden to send Archer artillery system to Ukraine
The Swedish government announced a new package of military aid to Ukraine on Thursday (January 19) that will include armoured infantry fighting vehicles and the Archer artillery system.
The package is worth 4.3 billion Swedish crowns ($419 million) and will also include light, portable NLAW anti-tank weapons, mine-clearing equipment and assault rifles.
Sweden will send about 50 of its tracked and armoured Type 90 infantry fighting vehicles. It can be used to transport up to eight infantry soldiers and is equipped with a 40-millimetre automatic canon.
The government did not specify how many Archer systems it would supply.
Sweden has 48 Archer systems, which is a vehicle-mounted self-propelled gun-howitzer made by Bofors BAE that Ukraine has long expressed an interest in adding to its arsenal as it seeks to repel Russian forces.
Ahead of the package presented on Thursday, Sweden had announced around 5 billion Swedish crowns of military aid to Ukraine as well as several instalments of humanitarian supplies.
Hundreds more Canada-made armoured vehicles to arrive in Ukraine by summer
A Canadian company supplying battle-ready armoured vehicles to Ukraine plans to deliver the 200 vehicles Ottawa promised to Kyiv before summer, the firm’s Chief Executive Officer Roman Shimonov said on Thursday.
Ontario-based Roshel Inc builds armoured vehicles for government and commercial organizations, including the US State Department and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa).
Its Roshel Senator armoured personnel carriers, built on Ford Motor Co’s F.N F-550 large pickup truck chassis with ballistic steel and fitted with mine-protection seats and other safety features, have been used by Ukrainian soldiers in their defence against the Russian invasion that began last February.
“Ukraine right now is in full-scale war … and they have to have a way to transport their personnel safely, and our vehicle provides them with this solution,” Shimonov said.
The Senators can be used as a medical evacuation vehicle or as a tactical combat vehicle, he said.
The company has established a “sophisticated” secure supply chain and has been shipping a few armoured vehicles every day, Shimonov said in an interview at Roshel’s assembly plant in Mississauga.
Canada has provided Ukraine with billions of dollars in aid, including over C$1 billion in military supplies. Shimonov declined to share details but said Ottawa’s order of 200 armoured vehicles for Ukraine is expected to be delivered by summer.
Thai court orders Malaysian allegedly behind scams to be deported to China
THURSDAY, JANUARY 19, 2023
A Thai court has issued an order for a wanted Malaysian businessman to be extradited to China to face charges in connection with fraud, Bernama news agency reported on Wednesday.
The court through a virtual hearing on Wednesday said Tedy Teow Wooi Huat, Penang-born founder of the Mobility Beyond Imagination Group (MBI), can appeal against the verdict within 30 days.
Both China and Malaysia have requested his repatriation, after being allegedly linked to a slew of scams.
Teow, wearing a brown prison uniform and a surgical face mask, appeared on camera from the Bangkok Remand Prison, accompanied by prison officers, Bernama reported.
He was calm throughout the hearing and after the judge read the verdict asked, “Can I appeal?”, the news agency said.
Malaysian media has reported that Beijing police wanted Teow for questioning after 400 investors in China filed a suit in a bid to recover investments worth some RM100 million ( 765 million baht, S$31 million).
In 2019, some 100 Chinese nationals allegedly cheated by the MBI’s group online pyramid scheme staged a protest outside the Chinese embassy in Kuala Lumpur.
Last year, Malaysian police smashed a syndicate involved in a Macau scam said to be linked to Teow and his two sons, the media reported.
The group was believed to have set up shell companies to launder ill-gotten gains before using the money to buy high-end properties in Malaysia and Thailand, and invest in cryptocurrencies totalling more than RM336 million ( 2.57 billion baht ), The Star reported.
Teow was arrested in a police raid at MBI’s office in Dannok, Sadao near the Thai-Perlis border on July 22 last year.
Is time up for feasts for ghosts of Korea’s patriarchal past?
THURSDAY, JANUARY 19, 2023
The Korean tradition of ancestral rites has been passed down through generations for thousands of years. But it may be only a matter of time before the ritual disappears for good.
The lighting of incense, circling of rice wine and bowing before a table of assorted food items offered to one’s dead ancestors are called “charye” on major holidays like Seollal (New Year’s Day) and Chuseok, and “jesa” on their death anniversaries.
The tradition itself means well. By performing jesa to honour their forefathers, Koreans believed the souls of those who brought them to the world protected them. It’s also an occasion that brings together extended family members to share memories of deceased parents or grandparents.
But the way jesa is prepared manifests some archaic traits in the strictly divided duties and hierarchy between men and women.
As if to symbolize the vestige of traditional gender roles still lodged somewhere in Koreans’ minds, men play the external, ceremonial roles in jesa, while women do most of the actual work.
As the host of the jesa ceremony called “jeju,” the male head of the family begins the ritual by kneeling before the altar to light a stick of incense, which invites the ancestors to the table.
His helper, usually the next man in lines like the jeju’s younger brother or son, pours the wine into a cup for the jeju to circle it over the incense three times. Then the jeju kneels and bows twice. A few other men do the same.
Ceremonial details vary across families, but in some households, women, despite having toiled away from dawn to prepare food for the charye table, are not allowed to bow at all.
Ki Seo-kyung in her mid-40s remembers the shock she felt as a child when her paternal grandmother told her to move over so her grandsons could bow during charye.
“I grew up with my maternal grandparents who treated sons and daughters equally. … It was the first time I was told to step aside because I was a girl,” Ki said.
Many women who grew up without facing palpable gender discrimination, at least at home, say the first Seollal, Chuseok or jesa at their in-laws’ was a jarring experience.
It can be their first encounter with strange or unpleasant relatives, the amount of kitchen work the women of her husband’s family do while the men rest in the living room, or difficulty understanding why the senior women are not willing to change anything. Even if the in-laws don’t perform ancestral rites because they are protestants, they still gather and feast on Seollal and Chuseok.
Korean women have been making strides in professional spheres over the past decades, but women still feel pressured, often by themselves, to keep excelling at their domestic jobs as mothers, wives and daughters-in-law at the same time.
It is partly because they grew up being influenced by their parent’s generation who had more clearly divided gender roles, in which the women took care of the kids as well as her and her husband’s families so that the men could focus on their careers.
The asymmetric strain on women has its roots in agrarian and Confucian Korea of the past where a son-in-law was treated like “a guest forever” — as the old Korean saying goes — while the role of a daughter-in-law was to carry on the family line or work like a servant, as some older women bitterly recall.
Young couples nowadays often share domestic responsibilities, but on Seollal and Chuseok, they’re shoved into a time machine headed back to the 1960s.
At these ironically festive occasions of large family gatherings, the new brides feel obliged to follow the unspoken but visible rules of the clans they married into — the wider the gap with her family by birth in terms of gender equality, the greater the displeasure.
“Even if they say ‘you don’t have to do anything,’ you can’t just sit idly when your husband’s aunt in her 60s is washing tons of dishes,” said Cha Ah-young in her 30s.
As for the numerous septuagenarian women who have stuck by the tradition of jesa for decades, some of them actually believe in spirits, or that honouring the ancestors is the reason their family are doing well.
“My mother-in-law told me, as if she’s doing me a great favour, that when it’s my turn to host jesa, we should do it without inviting the aunts and uncles,” said Oh Young-mi in her 40s.
“It’s like she wants me to promise to give her jesa when she passes away. From her point of view, it’s been really scaled down from decades ago when there was a jesa almost every month because they did it for everyone up to great great grandfathers.”
Oh and most of her peers say they don’t want their children to perform jesa for them.
In a poll of 847 adults conducted by job search website Incruit last year, 94.3 % said the charye table menu should be simplified, a view that Sungkyunkwan, an authority on jesa, has also shared.
A proposal for the eldest women of households that can’t let go of “proper” jesa: Please be fair in distributing the work, and ask your sons and other able-bodied men to help.
Japan Coast Guard patrol vessel runs aground in Niigata
THURSDAY, JANUARY 19, 2023
A Japan Coast Guard vessel ran aground in shallow waters off the coast of Kashiwazaki, Niigata Prefecture, on Wednesday morning, according to the Niigata coast guard office.
No injuries were reported among the 43 crew members aboard the Echigo patrol ship and there was no danger of it sinking. However, water flooded part of the vessel and oil leaked into the sea.
The Niigata coast guard office said at around 6:35 a.m. the vessel struck a hidden reef about 1.1 kilometres northwest of Shiiyahana Lighthouse, whose light was off at the time.
According to the office, the wind speed was about 10 meters per second, so the vessel might have drifted onto the reef.
“Such a situation is unthinkable under normal circumstances. It may have been caused by human error,” a coast guard official said.
The Japan Coast Guard released a statement saying, “It is extremely regrettable that such an accident has occurred.”
On Jan. 10, a Maritime Self-Defense Force destroyer struck a rock in waters off the island of Suo-Oshima in Yamaguchi Prefecture and was unable to navigate following the accident.
Ancient Maya cities, ‘super highways’ revealed in latest survey
THURSDAY, JANUARY 19, 2023
A new high-tech study has revealed nearly 1,000 ancient Maya settlements, including 417 previously unknown cities linked by what may be the world’s first highway network and hidden for millennia by the dense jungles of northern Guatemala and southern Mexico.
It is the latest discovery of roughly 3,000-year-old Maya centres and related infrastructure, according to a statement on Monday (January 16) from a team from Guatemala’s FARES anthropological research foundation overseeing the so-called LiDAR studies.
The findings were first published last month in the journal Ancient Mesoamerica.
All of the newly-identified structures were built centuries before the largest Maya city-states emerged, ushering in major human achievements in math and writing.
LiDAR technology uses planes to shoot pulses of light into the dense forests, allowing researchers to peel away vegetation and map ancient structures below.
Among the details revealed in the latest analysis are the ancient world’s first-ever extensive system of stone “highways or super-highways,” according to the researchers.
Around 110 miles (177 km) of spacious roadways have been revealed so far, with some measuring around 130 feet (40 meters) wide and elevated off the ground by as much as 16 feet (5 meters).
As part of the Cuenca Karstica Mirador-Calakmul study, which extends from northern Guatemala’s Peten jungle to southern Mexico’s Campeche state, researchers have also identified pyramids, ball game courts plus significant water engineering, including reservoirs, dams and irrigation canals.
This discovery shows that the cultural complexity within the Calakmul region is larger than what experts thought it was, an archaeologist, working at the site Josue Garcia said.
The latest finds date to the so-called middle to late pre-classic Maya era, from around 1,000-350 BC, with many of the settlements believed to be controlled by the metropolis known today as El Mirador. That was more than five centuries before the civilization’s classical peak when dozens of major urban centres thrived across present-day Mexico and Central America.
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