Thousands stage flower protest in Belarus as EU weighs sanctions

Andrei Makhovsky

MINSK (Reuters) - Protesters formed human chains and marched through the streets of Belarus carrying flowers on Wednesday in anger at a crackdown by strongman President Alexander Lukashenko that has prompted the European Union to consider new sanctions against Minsk.
Women take part in a demonstration against police violence during the recent rallies of opposition supporters following the presidential election in Minsk, Belarus August 12, 2020. REUTERS/Vasily Fedosenko

Security forces have clashed with protesters for three consecutive nights after Lukashenko claimed a landslide re-election victory in a vote on Sunday that his opponents say was rigged. Police have detained around 6,000 people.

Lukashenko has sought better relations with the West amid strained relations with traditional ally Russia. Brussels lifted sanctions, imposed over Lukashenko’s human rights record, in 2016, but will weigh new measures this week.

Lithuania, Poland and Latvia jointly offered to mediate between Lukashenko and the protesters, and threatened sanctions at a European or national level if the offer was declined.

A former Soviet collective farm manager, the 65-year-old Lukashenko has ruled Belarus for more than a quarter of a century but faces increasing anger over his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, a sluggish economy and human rights.

Women dressed in white formed a human chain outside a covered food market in the capital Minsk, holding flowers in the air and chanting slogans, while a crowd also gathered outside a prison where protesters were being kept.

“I cannot leave my children at night but I can come during the daytime and say my piece,” said Minsk resident Yelena. “They have stolen not just my vote but 26 years of my life. Yes, I think so, and this regime must go away.”

CLASHES

The Belarusian interior ministry said 51 protesters and 14 police officers had been injured in clashes on Tuesday night.

In Brest, a city in southwestern Belarus on the Polish border, police fired live rounds after some protesters it said were armed with metal bars ignored warning shots fired in the air, the ministry said. One person was injured.

Lukashenko has accused the protesters of being in cahoots with foreign backers from Russia and elsewhere to topple his government, and compared them to criminal gangs.

“The core of all these so-called protesters today comprises people with a criminal history and the unemployed,” he said at a government meeting on Wednesday.
Belarusian authorities earlier tied opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya’s husband to a plot by suspected Russian mercenaries to destabilise the country ahead of the election. She denied the allegation in an interview with Reuters.

In Tuesday night’s clashes, security forces beat some of the protesters, sometimes dragging people out of cars before attacking them.

United Nations human rights chief Michelle Bachelet condemned the detention of 6,000 people, “including bystanders, as well as minors, suggesting a trend of massive arrests in clear violation of international human rights standards”.

Some of the detainees were lined up in a row on state television this week, looking subdued and promising not to engage in revolutionary activities.

State media also broadcast footage of a van in Minsk with Russian number plates saying it was packed with ammunition and tents.

Tracked down by Reuters, Valdemar Grubov, the van’s owner, said he was a film producer and that the vehicle contained only his own personal effects.

He said he had been unable to retrieve the van due to COVID-19 restrictions and was not involved in any alleged foreign plot.

Tsikhanouskaya, a 37-year-old former English teacher who took on Lukashenko in the vote, has fled to neighbouring Lithuania to join her children there. She urged her compatriots not to oppose the police and to avoid putting their lives in danger.

But the protests continued into the evening on Wednesday as thousands took to the streets of the capital.

“We are scared but what else can we do? We are not being aggressive. We are women standing here who also have a voice,” said Minsk resident Zhenya. “We are scared of being arrested but we want to be heard.”

Additional reporting by Anton Zverev and Rinat Sagdiev in Moscow, Gabriela Baczynska in Brussels, Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva and Anna Ringstrom in Stockholm; Writing by Matthias Williams; Editing by Mark Heinrich

29 Years Ago, The First Web Page Went Live. This Is What It Looked Like

By James Felton

06 AUG 2020, 12:50

In the 1980s, Tim Berners-Lee became frustrated with how information was shared and stored at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN).

He noticed that, as well as being distributed inefficiently, information was being lost at the organization, largely due to a high turnover of staff. Technical details of old projects could sometimes be lost forever, or else had to be recovered through lengthy investigations in the event of an emergency. Different divisions of CERN used software written in a variety of programming languages, on different operating systems, making the transfer of knowledge cumbersome and time-consuming.

In response to these annoyances, he made a suggestion in 1989 that would go on to change the world, titled with some lackluster: Information Management: A Proposal. It described a system where all the different divisions of CERN could publish their own part of the experiment, and everyone else could access it. The system would use hypertext to allow people to publish and read the information on any kind of computer. This was the beginning of the World Wide Web.

The first web page went live 29 years ago today, on August 6, 1991. As such you've probably seen people online today linking to the "first-ever" web page.

29 years ago today, Tim Berners-Lee posted the first ever web page.
This is it https://t.co/MSxAZ2cMZK— Russ (@RussInCheshire) August 5, 2020

If you click the link, this is what you will be greeted with. You'll probably be instantly confused by the date, as well as the lack of memes and people being incredibly aggressive in the comment section.

CERN archive.

While it gives you an idea of what the first web page looked like, we may never know what the actual web page displayed on that day in August, 1991. There are no screenshots, instead what you are seeing is the earliest record we have of that first web page taken in 1992. While we know that when the World Wide Web first launched it contained an explanation of the project itself, hypertext and how to create web pages, the first page of the system designed to prevent the loss of information has ironically been lost, perhaps forever.

Though in retrospect what Berners-Lee had invented was world-changing, at the time its creators were too pre-occupied with trying to convince their colleagues to realize its value and adopt it to think about archiving their invention for future historians to gawp at.

"I mean the team at the time didn't know how special this was, so they didn't think to keep copies, right?" Dan Noyes, who ran the much larger CERN website in 2013 told NPR. He believes the first incarnation of the world's first web page is still out there somewhere, probably on a floppy disk or hard drive hanging around in somebody's house.

That was how the 1992 version was found.

"I took a copy of the entire website in a floppy disk on my machine so that I could demonstrate it locally just to show people what it was like. And I ended up keeping a copy of that floppy disk," Tim Berners-Lee told NPR.

Unfortunately, despite CERN's best efforts, the first page itself has not been found. It may never be.

I HAVE BEEN ON THE NET SINCE 1995

US Authorities Have Identified The Mystery Seeds Sent To Strangers Around The World

By James Felton 04 AUG 2020, 12:27

In an already packed weird year, you may have missed that people around the US, and indeed the world, have been receiving packs of mystery seeds.

The seeds, which appear to have been sent from China, prompted warnings from at least 27 states along the lines of "do not plant the mystery seeds," sometimes all in caps for a bit of extra "What are these, triffids?" intrigue.

Too late I planted them and now my backyard is emitting a strange glow what should I do— non podhoretz (NOT the guy from commentary) (@crookedroads770) July 25, 2020

The warnings were designed, not to protect you from man-eating triffids (though it's always best to be on the safe side), but because pathogens, contaminates, or insects could be hidden within the packaging, or the seeds themselves could belong to invasive species. The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) urged anyone who receives a mysterious unsolicited bag of seeds to contact their state regulator and hold onto the package until they are given further instructions.

After further investigation by the USDA, we now know what the mystery seeds are. Brace yourselves for a lack of resolution, because it does nothing to illuminate the motive of the sender.

"We have identified 14 different species of seeds, including mustard, cabbage, morning glory, and some herbs like mint, sage, rosemary, lavender, then other seeds like hibiscus and roses," Osama El-Lissy from the Plant Protection program of USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service said in a radio interview. "This is just a subset of the samples we've collected so far."

So far, so innocuous. Who doesn't like to be sent a lovely bit of mint? So what's in it for the senders?

"At this time, we don’t have any evidence indicating this is something other than a 'brushing scam' where people receive unsolicited items from a seller who then posts false customer reviews to boost sales," the USDA said in a statement.

Essentially, people send out the packages to random people and then review the product under a false name on sites like Amazon. This then boosts their seller rating, and their actual products (probably not seeds) start showing up in more people's search results while they shop.

In the meantime, the USDA is still collecting samples to try and determine if they contain anything that could be "of concern to US agriculture or the environment". It urges anyone who receives a mysterious unsolicited bag of seeds to contact their state regulator and hold onto the package until they are given further instructions.

Commissioner Andy Gipson

July 26 at 7:16 PM · 

Mysterious seeds from China! Things are getting stranger all the time in 2020. Several states in the southeast have reported the arrival of unwanted seeds and other goods from a China source. Our office has received contact from a few Mississippians reporting the arrival of unidentified seeds. If you receive seeds from China, DO NOT PLANT THEM. And don’t throw them in the trash. Please contact our Bureau of Plant Industry Office and report the seeds at 662-325-3390. We are developing a protocol for the best way to deal with them. Thanks! AG

Against All Warnings, People Have Planted The Forbidden Seeds. Here's What Grew

By James Felton 07 AUG 2020


Over the last few weeks, people around the world have been receiving mystery seeds in the post from China. Nobody ordered them, nobody wanted them, but nonetheless the mystery seeds keep coming, usually arriving in packets labeled as jewelry.

The US Authorities have been particularly stern in their warnings that people should not plant the forbidden seeds – for multiple reasons – with 27 states putting out warnings, sometimes in all caps just to make you think there's something seriously dangerous going on here.

whoever had Triffids on their 2020 nightmare bingo cards please mark your square! https://t.co/EHTLRqNZKy— OneWordLong (@OneWordLong) July 30, 2020



Flash forward to people all over the US planting the forbidden seeds. 

"We brought them down here and planted the seeds just to see what would happen," Doyle Crenshaw, from Booneville, Arkansas told local news network 5NewsOnline. They had arrived in a package labeled as studded earrings and he was too curious not to plant them. "Every two weeks I'd come by and put miracle grow on it and they just started growing like crazy."

Some of the plants have orange blossoms and long white fruits, which could mean it's a squash. So far, there are no signs of the plants attempting to eat people as Internet memes would suggest is next.

Crenshaw is far from alone in his curiosity.

The seeds are a mixed bag, but so far have been fairly innocuous. An investigation by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) found that they were pretty ordinary varieties you'd be able to buy at a store.

"We have identified 14 different species of seeds, including mustard, cabbage, morning glory, and some herbs like mint, sage, rosemary, lavender, then other seeds like hibiscus and roses," Osama El-Lissy from the Plant Protection program of USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service said in a radio interview. "This is just a subset of the samples we've collected so far."

You probably still shouldn't plant them though, as they could contain pathogens or contaminates, insects could be hidden within the packaging, or the seeds themselves could belong to invasive species. The USDA urged anyone who receives an unsolicited bag of seeds to contact their state regulator and hold onto the package until they are given further instructions.



As for an explanation why China appears to be gifting the world mysterious seeds, so far an online scam is the most likely scenario.

"At this time, we don’t have any evidence indicating this is something other than a 'brushing scam' where people receive unsolicited items from a seller who then posts false customer reviews to boost sales," the USDA said in a statement. 

Essentially, people send out the packages to random people and then review the product under a false name on sites like Amazon or Etsy. This then boosts their seller rating, and their actual products (probably not seeds) start showing up in more people's search results while they shop.

CRIMINAL CAPITALISM 

German prosecutors appeal for public help in tracing Wirecard boss


FILE PHOTO: The headquarters of Wirecard AG, an independent provider of outsourcing and white label solutions for electronic payment transactions is seen in Aschheim near Munich, Germany, July 22, 2020. REUTERS/Michael Dalder

BERLIN (Reuters) - German prosecutors appealed on television on Wednesday for help in tracking down Jan Marsalek, a former boss of collapsed payments company Wirecard, and issued a wanted notice for a manager they suspect of embezzling billions of euros.

Charges were first brought against Marsalek in June 22, and his status as a suspect was widely known, but under Germany’s extremely strict privacy laws, formally announcing he is a suspect and soliciting public help is a major step. Prosecutors said they believed he was outside Germany.

Munich-based Wirecard collapsed in June after auditors EY refused to sign off on its 2019 accounts because it could not verify 1.9 billion euros (£1.46 billion) supposedly held abroad in escrow by third-party partners.

The company subsequently filed for insolvency owing debts of 3.2 billion euros. Three former top managers have been arrested on suspicion of fraud and racketeering in Germany’s biggest accounting scandal.

The wanted notice, issued in English and German versions and illustrated with two pictures of the 40-year-old Austrian, one from 2017 in which he sports a beard, and one from last year in which he is cleanshaven, is headlined “Fraud in the billions”.

“Jan MARSALEK, ex board member of Wirecard AG, is strongly suspected of having committed billions in commercial gang fraud, the particularly serious case of embezzlement and other property and economic offences,” the notice issued jointly by Munich prosecutors and federal police reads. “He is currently on the run.”

The collapse of the financial technology company was widely seen as an embarrassment for German regulators, who for years ignored warnings from investigative journalists and market sceptics that Wirecard was inflating revenues and profit.

Former chief executive Markus Braun and former finance head Burkhard Ley have been in detention since July 22. They too are suspected of involvement in the alleged fraud.

Reporting by Thomas Escritt; editing by Grant McCool


Deutsche Boerse expels Wirecard from Germany's blue-chip index DAX

Ludwig Burger


FILE PHOTO: The logo of Wirecard AG, an independent provider of outsourcing and white label solutions for electronic payment transactions, is pictured at its headquarters in Aschheim near Munich, Germany, July 1, 2020. REUTERS/Andreas Gebert/File Photo

FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Exchange operator Deutsche Boerse (DB1Gn.DE) will remove Wirecard (WDIG.DE), the payments company that folded after an accounting scandal, from the DAX index of Germany’s leading blue-chip stocks this month following an index rule change.

The exchange operator on Wednesday said it had opted for new rules - which were proposed last month - to allow for a DAX removal within two days in the case of an insolvency.

It said the new composition of the DAX would be published on Aug. 19 at 2000 GMT and take effect after market close on Aug. 21, effectively making it Wirecard’s last day in the index.

A regular review of the index makeup would have taken until September.

In 2018 Wirecard, at the time a rising technology star, was promoted to the DAX index of 30 leading companies, displacing Commerzbank (CBKG.DE).

But in a dramatic fall from grace, it filed for insolvency in June after disclosing a 1.9 billion euro hole in its accounts that auditor EY said stemmed from a sophisticated global fraud.

German prosecutors on Wednesday issued a wanted notice and appealed on television for help in tracking down Jan Marsalek, the former head of operations at Wirecard, for suspected embezzlement.

Additional reporting by Hans Seidenstuecker; editing by Richard Pullin

German prosecutors probe possible death of suspended VW employee

FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Prosecutors in Braunschweig, Germany, on Wednesday said they were investigating the death of a man found in a burned-out car on Monday to determine whether there were any links to a dispute between Volkswagen (VOWG_p.DE) and Bosnian supplier group Prevent.

A body was found in a field in Lower Saxony on Monday, a spokeswoman for the Braunschweig prosecutor’s office said on Wednesday.

Local newspaper Helmstedter Nachrichten, citing sources, said the dead person was a Volkswagen employee who had done business with the Bosnian supplier group, who was also being probed for potentially illegal recordings of conversations.

A spokesman for police in Wolfsburg, Lower Saxony, Germany, where Volkswagen is based, confirmed a body had been found in Rottorf, Helmstedt, but referred further queries to the Braunschweig prosecutor’s office.

The Braunschweig prosecutor’s office declined to comment on whether the dead person was a Volkswagen employee, adding that it had not yet been possible to formally confirm the identity of the deceased.

The Braunschweig prosecutor’s office however said its staff were now looking at whether the death was linked to the staffer at the centre of the VW eavesdropping probe, and whether there were links to an arson attack on the VW staff member’s house in May.


Preliminary findings by forensic staff, who examined the body on Tuesday, had shown no obvious signs of “outside interference” which may have caused the death, the prosecutor’s office said.

Volkswagen on Wednesday said it would be inappropriate to speculate on the matter given that the carmaker had not received official notification about a possible death of one of its employees, and could not comment on an ongoing investigation.

Volkswagen earlier this month said one of its employees had been suspended pending the outcome of an investigation into eavesdropping.

Volkswagen and the Bosnian supplier group fell out in 2016 in a disagreement over pricing, prompting Car Trim and ES Automobilguss, both part of Bosnia’s Prevent Group, to halt deliveries of seat covers and cast iron parts for gear boxes, causing production losses at six of VW’s factories.

VW and Prevent have since been involved in claims and counterclaims for damages caused by the dispute.

A spokesman for Prevent Group on Wednesday declined to comment on the death. “It is a tragic event. There is nothing more to be said about it,” he said.

Discovery of Black Nitrogen Resolves A Longstanding Chemical Anomaly



TO MAKE BLACK NITROGEN THE GAS MUST BE SQUEEZED BY IMMENSE PRESSURES PROVIDED BY A DIAMOND ANVIL. CHRISTIAN WISSLE

By Stephen Luntz03 JUN 2020, 12:07

Scientists have succeeded in making what they call “black nitrogen” an allotrope (form) expected to exist based on observations of comparable elements, but which had stubbornly eluded them for decades.

The periodic table was essential to chemistry becoming a true science, based on grouping elements that behave in a similar manner into columns so that their behavior could be predicted. It was a long time before we discovered the reason for these similarities – that electrons orbit in “shells” and each element in a column has an outermost shell with the same number of electrons, with each row representing an additional shell.

As technology advanced, chemists observed the similarities are even greater than they first appear. For example, when placed under great pressure elements near the top of the table take on similar structures to those further down their column under more normal conditions. The sole exception to this has been nitrogen, which stubbornly refused to mimic phosphorus no matter how much pressure was applied. A paper in Physical Review Letters changes that, describing a crystalline state of nitrogen that resembles black phosphorus.

Nitrogen's column in the periodic table and those on either side, superimposed on a schematic of black nitrogen's wavy structure. Dominique Laniel

Phosphorus is a versatile element most commonly found in two major forms, red and highly volatile white allotropes. When heated under pressure, however, white phosphorus converts to the most stable structure, known as black phosphorus, whose sheets of zigzagging atoms bears some resemblance to graphite. Further down the table arsenic and antimony can take similar forms.

Dr Dominique Laniel of the University of Bayreuth applied 1.4 million atmospheres of pressure to nitrogen while heating it to 4,000ºC (7,200ºF) – vastly greater temperatures and pressures than are needed to transform phosphorus. Such conditions don't lend themselves to the easy study of a sample, but Laniel and co-authors bombarded the product with X-rays to learn its structure.

"We were surprised and intrigued by the measurement data suddenly providing us with a structure characteristic of black phosphorus,” Laniel said in a statement. “Further experiments and calculations have since confirmed this finding. This means there is no doubt about it: Nitrogen is, in fact, not an exceptional element, but follows the same golden rule of the periodic table as carbon and oxygen do."

Although nitrogen is in plentiful supply, the conditions required to turn it to black are so extreme the new allotrope is unlikely to be of any direct use. However, the study of new elemental forms can often improve our understanding of those they most resemble. In this light, the similarity of black nitrogen’s two-dimensional layers to wonder-material graphene could yield some value.

IT ALSO GIVES GREATER VALIDITY TO THE RUSSIAN THEORY OF ABIOGENIC HYDROCARBONS

Might The Humble House Brick Be The Battery Of The Future?

CHEMISTRY
THE CHEMICAL COMPOSITION AND POROUS STRUCTURE MAKES RED BRICKS WELL SUITED TO BEING TURNED INTO SUPERCAPACITORS THAT CAN STORE ELECTRICITY FROM INTERMITTENT ENERGY SOURCES FOR STILL NIGHTS. D'ARCY LABORATORY, DEPARTMENT OF CHEMISTRY, WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY IN ST. LOUIS


By Stephen Luntz11 AUG 2020, 18:39

Storing energy is among the world's greatest challenges, leading to an array of new technologies proposed as the solution. Perhaps the most surprising is to turn the bricks from which our houses are made into energy storage devices, holding onto electricity for use when we can't tap the wind or sun.

There is an easy way to turn a brick, or any other heavy object for that matter, into a store of energy – simply raise it up in a gravitational field and then use the work it does as it falls to power a generator. Architects also make great use of bricks' thermal capacity to hold onto the day's heat for nighttime warmth. However, Dr Julio D'Arcy of Washington University, St Louis, has something more exotic in mind.

D'Arcy noted bricks are usually red or light brown, a color given to them by hematite, a pigment humans have been using for at least 73,000 years. Having worked on the chemistry of rust, D'Arcy and colleagues were aware hematite can serve as an electrode, and the porous microstructure of bricks makes them well-suited to the task.

D'Arcy permeated two vapors through this porous structure. Encountering the hematite caused the vapors to form a polymer called PEDOT on deposition. In the process, D'Arcy turned an 8-percent hematite brick into a supercapacitor capable of storing charge and releasing it when needed.

In Nature Communications, D'Arcy reports the product is as stable as bricks and mortar, surviving 10,000 cycles of charge and discharge with 90 percent efficiency and unaffected by rain or temperature. We've all had the experience of a piece of fancy electrical equipment turn into a brick – who knew the opposite was also true?

D'Arcy's bricks can't remotely compete on energy density with lithium-ion batteries, so we certainly shouldn't expect them to be powering the cars of the future, let alone airplanes. So far, all D'Arcy has done with the stored energy is light a single LED for five minutes with three bricks.

On the other hand, the materials are certainly cheap, abundant, and able to serve their normal purpose while also storing electricity. D'Arcy foresees 50 bricks providing five hours of emergency lighting after being charged during the day by solar panels.

"Our method works with regular brick or recycled bricks, and we can make our own bricks as well," D'Arcy said in a statement, adding that the off the shelf bricks were bought for 65 cents each.

For PEDOT-layered bricks to become a widespread method of bulk energy storage, they will have to out-perform traditional batteries, newer flow battery systems, pumped hydro, compressed air, concrete-stacking cranes, and many other options. However, with many of these being limited in the locations where they can be applied, D'Arcy's idea may be another brick in the wall to protect the world we love from climate change's rising tide.

Pro-democracy media tycoon Jimmy Lai freed on bail amid Hong Kong crackdown

Hong Kong media tycoon and newspaper founder Jimmy Lai walks out from a police station after being bailed out on Wednesday. | AP

AFP-JIJI
AUG 12, 2020

HONG KONG – Hong Kong pro-democracy media mogul Jimmy Lai walked free on bail Wednesday, over 40 hours after he and other critics of China were rounded up by police as part of a widening crackdown on dissent.

When Lai left a police station he was swarmed by a crowd of journalists and cheering supporters, some of whom waved copies of his Apple Daily in a show of their backing.

A clampdown has gathered pace in Hong Kong since China imposed a sweeping security law in June, with opposition politicians disqualified and activists arrested for social media posts.

The moves have provoked outrage in the West and fear for millions who last year took to the streets to protest communist China’s tightening grip on the semi-autonomous city.

In one of the most dramatic days of the crackdown, Lai was among 10 people detained under the new law on Monday as around 200 police officers searched the newsroom of his tabloid, which is unapologetically critical of Beijing.

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Lai did not address the crowd upon his release, but he flashed a thumbs up as he was bundled into a car that inched away through the crowd.

In a display of solidarity for Lai, people in the city rushed to buy Tuesday’s Apple Daily, with the newspaper saying it had upped its print run to 550,000 from the normal circulation of 70,000.

One restaurant owner bought 50 copies at a newsstand in the commercial district of Mong Kok and said he planned to give them away free of charge.

Jimmy Lai sits in a car as he leaves a police station after being bailed out in Hong Kong on Wednesday. | AP

“Since the government doesn’t allow Apple Daily to survive, then we as Hong Kongers have to save it ourselves,” said the man, who gave his surname as Ng, as dozens of people lined up around the city from the early hours.

The newspaper’s front page showed a picture of Lai being led away in handcuffs, with the headline “Apple will fight on.”

Lai’s arrest sparked a buying spree in shares of his media group, and between Monday morning and closing time on Tuesday its stock value had risen by more than 1,100 percent.

Hong Kong’s new national security law criminalizes secession, subversion, terrorism and colluding with foreign forces.

The most serious crimes under the law — which was introduced on June 30 and is not supposed to be retroactive — carry up to life in jail.

Its broadly worded provisions criminalized certain political speech overnight, such as advocating sanctions, and greater autonomy or independence for Hong Kong.

Similar laws are used on the authoritarian mainland to snuff out opposition.

Lai, 71, was held on charges including colluding with foreign forces and fraud. The operation was hailed by Beijing, quick to declare him an “anti-China rabble-rouser” who conspired with foreigners to “stir up chaos.”

Among the others arrested were two of Lai’s sons, young pro-democracy activist Agnes Chow and Wilson Li, a former activist who works as a freelancer for Britain’s ITV News.

Chow was released on bail late Tuesday.

“It’s very obvious that the regime and the government are using the national security law to suppress political dissidents,” she told reporters after her release.

Supporters of Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai hold the copies of Apple Daily newspaper as Lai leaves a police station Wednesday. | AP

Critics believe the security law has ended the key liberties and autonomy that Beijing promised Hong Kong could keep after its 1997 handover by Britain.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo described Lai’s arrest as “further proof” that Chinese authorities had “eviscerated Hong Kong’s freedoms and eroded the rights of its people.”

“We’re going to respond in real ways,” Pompeo later promised in an interview with Newsmax.

The United States has already imposed sanctions on a group of Chinese and Hong Kong officials — including city leader Carrie Lam — in response to the crackdown.

Hong Kong’s police said those arrested were part of a group that had previously lobbied for foreign sanctions.

In response to objections made by Hong Kong’s Foreign Correspondents’ Club to the arrests, the Chinese foreign ministry warned that “eagerly justifying Jimmy Lai is nothing short of siding with the forces sowing trouble in Hong Kong and China at large.”

“We call on the FCC, Hong Kong to respect the facts, distinguish right from wrong, and stop smearing under the pretext of press freedom the implementation of the National Security Law,” it said.

DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISTS OF AMERICA

THE FIFTY

The far left (BY RIGHT WING AMERICAN STANDARDS)

 looks to seize one of the most prominent political jobs in the country

The latest iteration of the movement will face its first citywide test.



The far-left movement is making gains in New York two years after Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez toppled a congressional power broker and challenged the state’s political conventions. | Paul Sancya/AP Photo


By SALLY GOLDENBERG

08/12/2020 

NEW YORK — New York City’s old political guard is getting elbowed aside.

A 16-term Bronx congressman who routinely snagged prime State of the Union seats was trounced by a middle-school principal in June. A state lawmaker from Brooklyn who’d ascended to the role of assistant Assembly speaker during his 26 years in office lost to a first-time candidate with a background in tenant organizing. And in the voter-rich Southeastern section of Queens, a 24-year-old community organizer defeated the county-backed favorite for state Assembly.

Two years after Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez toppled a congressional power broker and challenged New York’s political conventions, the far-left movement that boosted her to the national stage has demonstrated it is here to stay.

Now, after turning away sitting politicians in Congress and Albany, the latest iteration of the movement will face its first citywide test.

New Yorkers will elect a new mayor in 2021, when term limits force out Bill de Blasio. The race provides a chance for the most liberal wing of the Democratic Party to seize its biggest electoral prize yet — one of the most prominent political jobs in America at a moment of unrivaled turmoil. The next mayor, almost certain to be a Democrat given the party’s 7-1 registration advantage in the city, will at once contend with a national call for police reform and the fallout from Covid-19, which has frozen tourism and decimated an economy that was booming only six months ago.

Negotiations on a new round of Covid relief have stalled. And that means no renewal of the eviction moratorium. We break down what could happen if the government doesn't take action quickly.

The job also provides automatic national relevance. It has a built-in bully pulpit, with the person elected to the office leapfrogging virtually every other politician in the state for regular coverage in one of the country's richest media markets.

The mayor also oversees a workforce of more than 300,000 people and a budget nearing $90 billion, providing resources to drive policies that could serve as a model for the rest of the nation. While de Blasio himself was a left-leaning candidate who won without much support from the Democratic establishment, he and the left wing of the party have grown further apart during his time in office, most recently and notably over police reform.

The Democratic Socialists of America, which backed Ocasio-Cortez’s insurgent win, claimed four new seats in the state Legislature in June’s primaries. The more established Working Families Party, another arm of the left, backed 31 winners, three of whom routed incumbents.

The slate of newcomers see their entrance into politics as their best shot at reforming the criminal justice system, increasing taxes on the wealthy, expanding social programs and restricting rent increases. Their victories mark the sharpest left turn the Democratic party has taken in New York City since the Working Families Party dominated competitive primaries in 2009.

Candidates have already begun courting a new, racially diverse set of political players who appeal to the activist movement. At a time when those looking to become mayor would be calling union leaders and influential congressional representatives, new and newly influential politicians say their phones are also ringing off the hook.

Jessica Ramos, a Queens state senator who in 2018 defeated a Democrat who had caucused with Republicans, and Public Advocate Jumaane Wiliams, who beat a sitting city councilman in an anti-establishment wave 11 years ago, have been approached for their support, they said. The Working Families Party, which veered left after its divorce from more politically conservative unions, has also been fielding candidates’ calls, a spokesperson said.

Candidates are also eying support from Jamaal Bowman, who defeated long-time Rep. Eliot Engel in the recent primary, and Alessandra Biaggi, who sent a longtime Albany powerbroker packing in 2018.

“Just a few years ago, people were leaving me out of pictures when I was running for lieutenant governor,” Williams said. “That’s a hell of a swing.”

Williams — who is running for re-election to a job that serves as a check on executive authority — said he hasn’t decided who to back. An outspoken critic of the NYPD, he said he will weigh leadership bonafides alongside reform credentials.

He was one of two dozen interviews POLITICO conducted with politicians, labor leaders and strategists that, taken together, paint a picture of shifting political winds and a group of candidates running to keep up with the changes.

The mayoral candidates are still making the usual calls to the coveted influence peddlers — union leaders, congressional representatives, pastors. The backing of 1199SEIU — the large healthcare workers union that took a risk in backing de Blasio when he was trailing the pack in 2013 — is still viewed as a prize. But now people hoping to occupy Gracie Mansion must navigate a new terrain with people who don’t play by the old rules.

“This is about regular, everyday voters who want something different, who are exhausted by just any Democrat,” said Camille Rivera, a progressive consultant with the firm New Deal Strategies. “They want Democrats who are going to speak truth to power; they want Democrats who are going to be fighting for them every single day.”

“Anyone who’s thinking that they can go middle-of-the-road in the Democratic primary now needs to change their strategy,” Rivera, who is not working for any of the candidates, said.

Politicians scrambled to recalibrate after Ocasio-Cortez’s victory, and the ensuing deep blue wave that delivered Ramos and Biaggi to Albany. They started swearing off real estate donations — something they had long been content receiving — and began calling for widespread reforms to the NYPD.

But what would otherwise be a linear strategy to win votes is complicated by an anticipated desire for a strong municipal manager during a time of profound crisis and voters who, in prioritizing that, want a message of governance over values. Covid-19 lay bare inequities in the health care system, flattened the city’s cultural and tourism sectors and left nearly a million people unemployed. Crime is on the rise and budget constraints threaten municipal layoffs.

The city’s business community, hardly a force in local elections despite their resources, is hoping to influence the conversation.

“There is great concern about the divisive politics that have characterized the Democratic primary elections that most of [the] business [community] think is counter-productive to economic recovery,” said Kathy Wylde, head of a prominent business consortium and the gatekeeper to the city’s Wall Street executives. “I do believe that there will be a number of efforts to try and mobilize greater voter participation under the theory that that will result in a more centrist approach to the challenges facing the city.”

Jordan Barowitz, spokesperson for developer Douglas Durst, suggested candidates are appealing exclusively to the left at their own peril.

“People running for office in New York City spend more time talking to the Democratic Socialists of America than they do to the business community about getting people back to work,” Barowitz said. “What is our concern? The collapse of New York’s economy, collapse of the city’s budget and ability to provide services, high unemployment, poverty.”

Maya Wiley. | D Dipasupil/Getty Images
“To run the city, especially in a crisis, everybody needs a seat at the table,” he added.

But for all their resources, New York’s business executives long ago lost their influence in mayoral races. They aren’t politically organized and they represent values anathema to many Democrats — particularly after the Occupy Wall Street movement. The city’s strict campaign finance laws further limit their leverage. And the new 8-to-1 match in the city’s public campaign finance system makes it much easier for candidates to swear off big dollar donors.

Meanwhile, the Democratic Socialists of America has no public plans to back a citywide candidate.

In a note to members obtained by POLITICO, a Queens organizer emphasized the need to build DSA’s membership beyond its stronghold in Western Queens and fortify its internal structure. “To this end, I do not think we have the capacity to endorse a candidate where we’d be the primary source of institutional support and infrastructure this year,” it concludes.

But, whether or not the group endorses a mayoral hopeful, the movement aligned with the DSA now encompasses tens of thousands of voters who are newly focused on local races.

Ahead of the Feb. 14 deadline to change party registration, 52,587 people joined the Democratic Party out of 103,093 changes in the city, according to a memo prepared by a consultant who specializes in voting data and trends.

Two-thirds of the new Democrats were previously unaffiliated with any party, meaning they could only vote in general elections, limiting their influence over city races that are largely determined in primaries. Another 18 percent of new Democrats had been Republicans, according to the memo, which was shared with POLITICO.

All told, Democrats doubled their loss of 32,020 departing voters over the prior year, according to the memo, which was prepared several months ago.

“While this is an incomplete picture of the entire state, it does point to a strong grassroots effort in key areas where progressives have gained strength and voters under 40 have increased their vote share; as well as in moderate, college-educated centers where Democratic registration is also growing,” the memo concludes.

“There's a newer portion of Democratic voters that are engaged, paying attention and informing themselves and they tend to be a little more anti-establishment and a little more left than the traditional primary voters in New York,” said Luke Hayes, who ran Bowman’s campaign.

He said newer voters are concerned about climate change, college debt and health care costs and began tuning into local politics after the 2016 election. Even if they aren’t affiliated with the DSA, they are not turned off by the Socialist label, he added.

“Post Trump, I think a lot of people were like, how did it come to this?” Hayes said.

That tension between the organized, energized far left and the more traditional forces in the city’s Democratic establishment is scrambling candidates’ strategies. They will need to marry the values of the left with the pragmatism more centrist Democrats are hungering for, strategists say. That could prove challenging in a crowded field with limited time for contenders to define themselves. Voters are unlikely to tune into the race before the presidential election in November, leaving just seven months until the primary.

Right now the top tier of the field is split among three career politicians and a former de Blasio attorney likely to jump into the race:

— Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, a Black former cop, has close ties to the county Democratic machine but has seen his electoral prowess diminished considerably in recent years. He’s a relative moderate who has made unabashedly pro-gun comments and touts his law-and-order credentials.

— City Comptroller Scott Stringer has been assiduously courting support among political newcomers with early endorsements that are paying off. Ramos, for example, said she is all but certain to endorse him. He also hails from Manhattan’s influential political network on the Upper West Side, and has been making inroads in Black communities.

— City Council Speaker Corey Johnson has a charisma and New York pride that have served him well, but become less significant as the state of the city declines. He was the first candidate to publicly refuse donations from real estate executives. He recently emerged from a bloody budget negotiation and is reassessing his strategy heading into campaign season.

— Maya Wiley, who served as de Blasio’s lead attorney and an MSNBC legal analyst, is Black, would break ground as the city’s first female mayor, and also ran the city’s police accountability panel — the Civilian Complaint Review Board — under de Blasio. Her ties to the mayor — who is under fire from the left for his handling of police protests — are an electoral liability. 

— Shaun Donovan, who ran agencies in the administrations of Obama and former Mayor Mike Bloomberg, has been fundraising and hiring staff for his own bid. Bill Hyers, who managed de Blasio’s 2013 campaign, and Amelia Adams, who worked for former Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, have signed on.

Both Johnson and Stringer are counting on the advent of ranked-choice voting, which will make its debut in the city next year. The two Manhattan Democrats are angling to win a plurality of white liberals and at least come in second-place among Black voters, who are pivotal to any citywide election.

Meanwhile Open Society Foundations president Patrick Gaspard, one of de Blasio’s oldest and closest allies, has been calling people on Wiley’s behalf, according to four people familiar with his entreaties. Among his first calls was 1199, where he previously worked as political director before becoming President Barack Obama’s ambassador to South Africa.

City Sanitation Commissioner Kathryn Garcia, de Blasio’s pinch hitter in times of crisis, is considering jumping in on account of her extensive government experience, according to three people familiar with her thinking. Other lesser-known candidates include Dianne Morales, who runs a nonprofit, and Loree Sutton, de Blasio’s former veterans affairs commissioner.

Lupe Todd-Medina, a Democratic consultant who is so far unaffiliated with any of the candidates, said older Black voters are wary of unabashedly progressive positions. The divide, which has played out in elections throughout the country, was amplified by the recent debate in the City Council over how to rein in the budget of the NYPD. Calls to “defund” the agency — sounded by protestors following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis — were rejected by members of the Council’s Black, Latino & Asian Caucus.

Todd-Medina said the power of Black churches is a mainstay in local races and a place where moderate voices are still well received. “Technically pastors can’t endorse, but you know which ones are with who,” she said. “Everyone comes to church but there’s always one person who comes a little bit more.”

Nevertheless, the emergence of the left has sustained beyond Ocasio-Cortez’s 2018 upset.

“People have been fed up for a while and in 2018 I think that it finally boiled over and enough people said that they weren’t going to take it anymore. And that’s why we saw a wave,” Ramos said. “This is the first city election since that wave started and I think it’s inevitable that we’re going to have an outsized influence on who our next mayor is going to be.”

This article is part of The Fifty, a new POLITICO series that looks at how state and local leaders are responding to current national challenges, from the pandemic to the economic crisis to the reckoning with race. More coverage of these issues here.

State Department watchdog finds Trump’s U.K. ambassador ‘made inappropriate or insensitive comments’

But the envoy, Woody Johnson, rejected the inspector general’s findings and recommendation.


U.S. Ambassador to Britain Woody Johnson, left, with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo last month. | Matt Dunham/AP Photo

By QUINT FORGEY
08/12/2020

The State Department’s Office of Inspector General concluded that President Donald Trump’s ambassador to the United Kingdom made offensive remarks to staff at the U.S. Embassy in London, according to a report released Wednesday.
The inspector general’s office “learned, through employee questionnaires and interviews, that the Ambassador,” billionaire New York Jets co-owner Woody Johnson, “sometimes made inappropriate or insensitive comments on topics generally considered Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO)-sensitive, such as religion, sex, or color.”

Such “offensive or derogatory comments, based on an individual’s race, color, sex, or religion, can create an offensive working environment and could potentially rise to a violation of EEO laws,” the IG report states, deeming that a “more thorough review by the Department is warranted.”

The IG report also found that some embassy staff “were impacted by the Ambassador’s demanding, hard driving work style,” which it stated “had a negative effect on morale in some embassy sections.”

The revelations from the department’s independent watchdog come after CNN reported last month that Johnson, a prominent Republican donor and heir to the Johnson & Johnson pharmaceutical fortune, was investigated by the inspector general for his alleged remarks, as well as for allegedly using his official position to attempt to benefit the president’s personal business interests in the U.K.

The New York Times also reported last month that Johnson had discussed with Scotland’s secretary of state in 2018 the possibility of hosting the British Open golf tournament at the Trump Turnberry resort in Scotland. Johnson told colleagues at the time that the president had asked him to help secure the choice of venue, the Times reported.
Johnson issued an apparent response to the media reports in a tweet last month, writing that he had “followed the ethical rules and requirements of my office at all times. These false claims of insensitive remarks about race and gender are totally inconsistent with my longstanding record and values.”

The ambassador was similarly reluctant to acknowledge any wrongdoing in Wednesday’s IG report, which recommended that the State Department’s Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs — in coordination with the Office of Civil Rights — assess Johnson’s “compliance with Department Equal Employment Opportunity or leadership policies” and, “based on the results of the review, take appropriate action.”

In Johnson’s response to a draft of the IG report, which he sent to the inspector general’s office in May, the ambassador asserted that throughout his government tenure, “and indeed for the entirety of my professional life,” he had “respected both the law and the spirit of EEO principles and have ensured that all employees under my direction do the same.”

“If I have unintentionally offended anyone in the execution of my duties, I deeply regret that, but I do not accept that I have treated employees with disrespect or discriminated in any way. My objective is to lead the highly talented team at Mission UK to execute the President’s policies and to do so in a way that is respectful of our differences, with zero tolerance for discrimination of any kind,” Johnson wrote.

“In order to address the concerns documented in your report, perceived or real, I have reviewed an S/OCR course on discrimination in the workplace and have instructed the entire Mission UK country team to do the same, with 100% compliance by the end of May,” he continued.

But Johnson wrote that “I respectfully disagree” with the IG report’s recommendation for an assessment of his EEO compliance, and the inspector general’s office stated that the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs also “disagreed with this recommendation” in its own response to the draft IG report last month.

“The bureau stated, that given the concern expressed, the Ambassador has viewed the Office of Civil Rights video on workplace harassment and has instructed all section and agency heads to do the same. He has also encouraged all staff to take the Foreign Service Institute training on mitigating unconscious bias,” according to the final IG report.

“The bureau also represented that the Ambassador ‘is well aware of his responsibility to set the right tone for his mission and we believe his actions demonstrate that,’” the IG report states, and the bureau “reported it did not believe a formal assessment was required.”

Instead, the bureau “proposed that, in coordination with the embassy, it would instead work with the Office of Civil Rights to provide advice and additional training to all staff, including the Chief of Mission, to heighten awareness on these important issues.”

Replying to the responses from Johnson and the bureau, the inspector general’s office stated that it “considers the recommendation unresolved,” and argued that the embassy’s actions and the bureau’s proposal “do not address the recommendation” outlined in the IG report.

The investigation by the inspector general’s office was conducted from September-December 2019, according to the IG report, and it did not appear to address the allegations against Johnson regarding Trump’s Scotland resort.