CAPITALI$M IS CRISIS EVEN IN CHINA

China's Evergrande: How will a 'controlled demolition' impact the economy?


Evergrande is a real estate giant with a presence in over 280 Chinese cities (AFP/Jade Gao)

Beiyi SEOW
Wed, December 8, 2021,

As Chinese real estate behemoth Evergrande reportedly prepares for a government-backed mega-restructure, here is an explainer on what Beijing's bid to limit a contagion could mean for the wider economy:

- What happened to Evergrande? -

The Chinese government sparked a crisis in the property industry when it launched a drive last year to curb excessive debt among real estate firms as well as rampant consumer speculation.

Evergrande, a real estate giant with a presence in over 280 Chinese cities, was the most prominent developer to pay the price for Beijing's clampdown.

More than $300 billion in debt, it teetered for months on the edge of default, returning each time from the brink thanks to a last-minute repayment.

But according to Bloomberg it has now missed a 30-day grace period on overdue coupon payments worth $82.5 million, while agency S&P Global Ratings has said a default now "looks inevitable".

- What happens now? -

After Evergrande warned last week it may not be able to meet its financial obligations, the local government in Guangdong -- where the firm is headquartered -- summoned billionaire chairman Hui Ka Yan, and said they will send a "working group" to the company.

Analysts said this moment signalled the formal start of the giant's debt restructuring -- a process that will likely take years.

- What does it mean for investors? -

Signs that the state is taking a bigger role in Evergrande's future have eased investor concern of a disorderly collapse.

"It's pretty clear that the state is seriously involved in managing the situation," Shehzad Qazi, managing director of data analytics firm China Beige Book, told AFP.

It will "ultimately be a 'controlled demolition'," Qazi added.

But bondholders are likely to face deep haircuts, and even if restructuring provide some answers, the broader impact of Beijing's sweeping property crackdown remains to be seen.

- What about other Chinese developers? -

At least 10 property firms have defaulted on bonds since concerns started to grow over Evergrande in June.

Hong Kong-listed Sunshine 100 defaulted after missing a deadline to make $179 million in payments this week, and Kaisa failed in a debt swap to buy crucial time for raising cash.

Property firms made up 36 percent of the $10.2 billion of offshore bonds that Chinese borrowers defaulted on this year, Bloomberg said.

- How will China's economy be impacted? -

The People's Bank of China said last week that Evergrande's problems came from its own "poor management and blind expansion" in a bid to reassure investors.

Regulators have said they would safeguard the rights of homebuyers, while the banking and insurance authority stressed the need to "focus on satisfying mortgage needs for first homes."

With the local government sending a working group to the firm, the Evergrande crisis has drawn parallels with government intervention in other indebted companies, notably aviation conglomerate HNA Group.

HNA's restructuring did not cause investor panic -- although Evergrande's higher profile means this time will likely prove a bigger challenge.

But whatever happens to Evergrande, Beijing's broader clampdown has already had a major impact on the property sector and deepened worries over key firms' financial health, bringing home sales and prices down.

- And what about the global economy? -

A slowdown in the Chinese real estate sector, which accounts for a significant proportion of the country's economic output, could have ripple effects on global growth.

Evergrande's woes have rocked stock markets -- and the real estate sector makes up much of distressed dollar-denominated debt internationally.

But an Evergrande default has long been expected, and fears over a "Lehman moment" -- a reference to the Wall Street titan whose collapse prompted panic worldwide during the 2008 global financial crisis -- have already been dismissed.

bys/rox/ser

Kaisa share suspension furthers China property sector fears


Kaisa is China's 27th-largest real estate firm -- but one of its most indebted (AFP/JADE GAO)

Jerome TAYLOR
Tue, December 7, 2021

Chinese property firm Kaisa suspended share trading in Hong Kong on Wednesday as questions swirl over its ability to make repayments and contagion spreads within the country's debt-ridden real estate sector.

The Chinese government sparked a crisis within the property industry when it launched a drive last year to curb excessive debt among real estate firms as well as rampant consumer speculation.

Companies that had accrued huge debt to expand suddenly found the taps turned off and began struggling to complete projects, pay contractors and meet both domestic and foreign repayments.


Kaisa, China's 27th-largest real estate firm in terms of sales but one of its most indebted, became the latest company to spook investors when it announced on Friday that it had failed in a bid for a debt swap that would buy it crucial time.

On Wednesday morning the firm announced it was suspending trading in Hong Kong, where it is listed, "pending the release by the Company of an announcement containing inside information".

It is the second time the company has suspended trading in the last month.

Kaisa last month announced a plan to delay the repayment timeline for some of its bonds, offering an exchange for at least $380 million of notes, which would have given it some room to find money further down the line.

But the offer failed to win the 95 percent approval from bondholders needed for the plan to go ahead.

The company currently has some $11.6 billion of dollar notes outstanding. It previously defaulted on a dollar debt in 2015, becoming the first Chinese developer to do so.

The most indebted Chinese property firm is Evergrande, which set off the current confidence crisis earlier in the summer.

The Shenzhen-based behemoth racked up an eye-watering $300 billion in loans before Beijing began to rein in the sector.

- Mega-restructure -

On Tuesday, Evergrande missed a deadline to repay some of its overseas creditors, raising the prospect of it defaulting as it prepares for a government-backed mega-restructure.

Bloomberg News reported some of the $82.5 million in overdue coupon payments it owed by the end of Tuesday -- when a 30-day grace period ran out -- remained unpaid.

Ratings group S&P has predicted that a default by Evergrande is now "inevitable".

Questions have swirled over whether Evergrande is simply too big to be allowed to fail, given its collapse could send shock waves through the wider Chinese economy.

But signs now point to Beijing being willing to close the chapter on the 25-year-old real estate empire that has typified China's breakneck growth in recent decades.

After Evergrande said Friday it may not be able to meet its financial obligations, the government summoned the company's founder and announced several moves that have given the clearest picture yet of Beijing's plans to end the crisis.

A new seven-strong "risk management committee" has been set up to manage the restructuring. Only two executives from the company are on the committee -- others include officials from state entities.

Guangdong's provincial government is also sending a working team to the company, which analysts at Jefferies said indicated a "potential takeover of Evergrande".

Evergrande has yet to comment on the restructuring.

Kaisa and Evergrande have become the most visible faces of the debt crunch within China's property sector but defaults have rippled throughout the sector.

According to Bloomberg News, at least 10 lower-rated real estate firms have now defaulted on onshore or offshore bonds since the summer.

So far this year, Chinese borrowers have defaulted on a record $10.2 billion of offshore bonds, Bloomberg reported, with real estate firms accounting for 36 percent of those non-repayments.

Wealthy owners of at least seven Chinese real estate companies have also sold off some of their own luxury assets in recent weeks to help prop up their firms, Bloomberg added.

But the latest troubles within the property sector did little to ruffle regional stock markets on Wednesday.

Asian markets were mostly up across the region, including in Shanghai, while Hong Kong was trading flat by the lunchtime break.

jta/leg

China unveils package to boost economy as Evergrande teeters

Martin Farrer 

THE GUARDIAN

12/7/2021

China’s politburo has signalled measures to kickstart the faltering economy as the crisis gripping the country’s debt-laden property sector continued to blight prospects for growth.© Provided by The Guardian Photograph: Greg Baker/AFP/Getty Images

President Xi Jinping’s senior leadership committee rubber-stamped a plan from the central bank on Monday for more targeted lending to businesses and outlined support for the housing market.

The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) said it would cut the reserves most banks must hold by 0.5 percentage points, releasing another 1.2tn yuan ($188bn) into the economy, the central bank said in a statement

.

© Photograph: Greg Baker/AFP/Getty Images China’s real estate sector – once a key driver of growth – has been struggling recently.

Related: China Evergrande shares hit record low as it edges closer to default

Leaders had also agreed to “promote the construction of affordable housing, support the commercial housing market and better meet the reasonable housing needs of buyers”, Xinhua state news agency said.

Attendees at the Monday meeting chaired by Xi said the housing moves would “promote the healthy development and virtuous cycle of the real estate industry”, according to Xinhua.

Despite the positive read-out from the politburo meeting, the country’s second-biggest property developer, Evergrande, was inching ever nearer to what could be the biggest failure in Chinese corporate history.

It needed to pay $82.5m in bond repayments by midnight New York time on Monday in order to avoid an automatic default. But some bondholders did not receive coupon payments by the deadline, four people with knowledge of the matter told Reuters on Tuesday.

Although Evergrande has faced three similar deadlines on offshore bonds since October and made each one at the last minute, it was less clear that it was going to make the payments this time.

A statement from the company on Monday evening said that in the light of its financial problems it was forming a risk management committee to “mitigate and eliminate future risks”. The statement helped stabilise its shares on Tuesday after dropping 20% in the previous session. It followed a weekend statement from the company said it might not be able to repay some of its $300bn debts.

A default would trigger cross-defaults on all the company’s about $19bn of dollar bonds in international capital markets and put Evergrande at risk of becoming China’s biggest-ever defaulter, which would ripple through the property sector and beyond, further rattling global investor confidence.

But most analysts now expect to have to undergo a significant restructuring to spread its debts throughout the economy.

Investors are also concerned about a potential default by Kaisa Group Holdings Ltd, which faces a $400m bond maturity on Tuesday. After Evergrande, it owes the most to foreign bondholders, with debts of $12bn.

Another Chinese developer, Sunshine 100 China Holdings, said on Sunday that it had missed a deadline to repay $179m in principal and interest payments on a 10.5% bond.

China’s economy is not growing as quickly as expected as it faces headwinds from a disrupted global economy, continued Covid outbreaks and the slowing housing market – once a key driver of growth but which is now seeing a string of defaults.

In October, the IMF lowered its forecasts for China’s growth to 5.6% in 2022, which is huge by the standards of developed nations but modest by recent Chinese standards.

The IMF’s managing director, Kristalina Georgieva, said on Monday that China has an important part to play in the global economy as it recovers from Covid-19, but its growth was slowing.

“China achieved a truly remarkable recovery, but its growth momentum has been slowing notably. As China is a vital engine for global growth, taking strong actions to support high-quality growth will help not only China, but the world,” Georgieva said.

Analysts at UBS said Monday’s policy announcements were a “clear signal” of monetary easing but others were less sure and noted that the PBOC insisted that monetary policy would remain prudent.

Julian Evans-Pritchard, China economist at Capital Economics, said the move was an “opening of the fiscal taps, not a flood”, and that “this easing will cushion but not stop growth from slowing”.

However, he predicted that the PBOC would have to cut its main interest rate before long. “As economic activity continues to weaken and the PBOC becomes more serious about lowering corporate financing costs we think it will have to take further action, including policy rate cuts.”

Bill Bishop, a respected China expert and author of the Sinocism newsletter, said Xinhua reports about the politburo meeting had received “a lot of attention” but he did not believe it was a significant easing.

“I do not think that is a fundamental shift,” he wrote in his latest newsletter. “Policymakers are dealing with some significant problems in the property markets including – but far from limited to – Evergrande, and they do not want to crater the industry. Can they calibrate and avoid disaster? We are going to find out.”

Marijuana may not improve sleep for some people, study suggests

"The point of this study is not to say that cannabis is bad for categorically. It's just there's probably more to this issue than we currently understand" 

By Cara Murez, HealthDay News

Many folks turn to pot to help them relax and get a good night's sleep, but new research finds the practice may do the exact opposite.

"I think [the results] were somewhat surprising because, in our mind, anecdotally cannabis seems to help with, but ... the evidence to support that notion is just not there yet," said senior study author Dr. Karim Ladha.

He is an anesthesiologist and clinician scientist in the University of Toronto's department of anesthesia and pain medicine.

Experts recommend getting about seven to nine hours of sleep every night, but getting too little or too much can both have negative impacts, said study first author Dr. Calvin Diep, an anesthesia resident at the University of Toronto.

RELATED Survey: More in U.S. using medical pot for insomnia, pain, stress

"When we talk about ideal duration, at least there seems to be an optimal range of [sleep], or a Goldilocks effect," Diep said. "If you're sleeping less than some amount, it seems to increase your risk of long-term cardiovascular issues such as atherosclerosis or even the risk of events such as heart attacks and strokes."

"But then on the other end, the literature has also found in large-scale population studies that for people that seem to be oversleeping or sleeping greater than eight or nine hours ... the same risks also arise long term," Diep said.

Using data from the 2005 to 2018 U.S. National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, the research team found that recent cannabis use was linked both to getting too much and to getting too little.

RELATED Study dispels 'lazy stoner' myth: Pot users don't exercise any less

The new study included nearly 22,000 individuals who answered all the questions on duration and problems, cannabis used and other potentially influential factors, including data on health issues, prescriptions and alcohol use.

About 14.5% of the study participants had used cannabis in the previous 30 days. They were 34% more likely to report not getting enough sleep and 56% more likely to report getting too much sleep.

They also were 31% more likely to have trouble falling asleep, staying asleep or sleeping too much in the previous two weeks. They were about 29% more likely to have talked to their doctors about their problems.

RELATED Study: Pot users may need more anesthesia, painkillers during, after surgery

The researchers further analyzed the data in terms of moderate and heavy users of the drug. Those who had used it fewer than 20 of the past 30 days were 47% more likely to sleep too much.

But those who used cannabis at least 20 of the past 30 days were 64% more likely to get too little and 76% more likely to get too much, the findings showed.

This suggests a response to a particular dose, Ladha said, although the study did not prove that marijuana use actually causes problems.

As cannabis has been decriminalized for medical and recreational uses in many U.S. states, about 45 million U.S. adults in 2019 reported using cannabis -- double the number who were using it in the early 2000s.

The findings were published Monday in the journal Regional Anesthesia & Pain Medicine.

It makes sense that cannabis would influence and wake cycles, because humans have cannabinoid receptors throughout their bodies and in multiple parts of their brains, explained Dr. Bhanuprakash (Bhanu) Kolla, an associate professor of psychiatry and psychology and a consultant in the Center for Medicine at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.

"We know from some initial research that when you are naive to cannabis and start using it, at least the first one or two times, you're going to [sleep] a little better and you perceive your quality to have improved, but those are very small studies done very short-term," Kolla said.

"More importantly, we know that when people regularly use cannabis or have a cannabis use disorder or addiction, when they stop using cannabis there is significant disruption. That's part of the withdrawal syndrome from the cannabis," Kolla noted.

Sleep is a pillar of health like diet and exercise, impacting reaction times, thinking and metabolism, he said.

"If we want medical use for cannabis, we need to be treating it like we treat other medicines," Kolla said.

That would include extracting the components to create a consistent chemical structure, quality control, a randomized trial and approval by a regulatory organization, he added.

In the meantime, if someone is considering using cannabis to help with issues, Ladha said they should consult with their health care provider.

"The point of this study is not to say that cannabis is bad for categorically. It's just there's probably more to this issue than we currently understand," Ladha said.

More information

The U.S. National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health has more on cannabis.

Copyright © 2021 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

USSR’s death blow was struck 30 years ago in a hunting lodge

By VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV and YURAS KARMANAU

1 of 9

Russia's President Boris Yeltsin, second right, Ukraine's President Leonid Kravchuk, second left, Belarus' leader Stanislav Shushkevich, third left, Russia's State Secretary Gennady Burbulis, right, Belarus' Prime Minister Vyacheslav Kebich, third right, and Ukraine's Prime Minister Vitold Fokin, left, sign an agreement terminating the Soviet Union and declaring the creation of the Commonwealth of Independent States in Viskuli, Belarus, on Dec. 8, 1991. The agreement between the leaders of Soviet republics of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus dealt the final deadly blow to the Soviet Union. 

(AP Photo/Yuri Ivanov, File)


MOSCOW (AP) — When the leaders of the Soviet Union’s three Slavic republics met at a secluded hunting lodge on Dec. 8, 1991, the fate of vast country hung in the balance. With a stroke of their pens, they delivered a death blow to the USSR, triggering shockwaves that are still reverberating three decades later in the tensions between Russia and Ukraine.

The agreement they signed signed at the dacha in Viskuli, in the Belavezha forest near the border with Poland, declared that “the USSR ceases to exist as a subject of international law and as a geopolitical reality.” It also created the Commonwealth of Independent States, a loose alliance of ex-Soviet republics that still exists but carries little meaning.

Two weeks later, eight other Soviet republics joined the alliance, effectively terminating the authority of Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, who stepped down on Dec. 25, 1991, with the hammer and sickle flag lowered over the Kremlin.




 Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, left, and Russian Federation President Boris Yeltsin confer during a meeting of the Congress of People's Deputies on Monday, Sept. 2, 1991, in Moscow, Russia. Gorbachev said Yeltsin was a driving force behind the collapse of the Soviet Union.

 (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko, File)

Stanislav Shushkevich, the head of the republic of Byelorussia, as Belarus was called at the time, spoke about the signing of the agreement with pride. The accord reached with Boris Yeltsin of Russia and Leonid Kravchuk of Ukraine, marked a “diplomatic masterpiece,” he said.

“A great empire, a nuclear superpower, split into independent countries that could cooperate with each other as closely as they wanted, and not a single drop of blood was shed,” added Shushkevich, 86, in an interview with The Associated Press.

But that blood would be spilled later — in multiple conflicts across the former Soviet republics once yoked under Moscow’s tight control.

One of the deadliest began in eastern Ukraine shortly after Russia’s 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula, as Russian-backed separatists battled Ukrainian troops in fighting that has killed over 14,000 people.

The latest Russian troop buildup on its border with Ukraine has fueled Western concerns of an invasion. During a video conference Tuesday, U.S. President Joe Biden told Russian President Vladimir Putin that Moscow will face economy-jarring sanctions if it launches an offensive against its neighbor.

In his memoirs, Gorbachev expressed bitterness about the 1991 agreement, which doomed his desperate attempt to save the USSR from collapse by trying to negotiate a new “union treaty” among the republics, an effort he had begun months earlier.

“What they so hastily and stealthily did in Belavezha was like a plot to kill an injured but still living person by dismembering it,” wrote Gorbachev, now 90. “The striving for power and personal interests prevailed over any legal arguments or doubts.”

For Shushkevich, however, “It wasn’t a tragedy at all!”

“We decided to shut the prison of nations,” he added. “There was nothing to feel contrition for.”

Shushkevich argued that he and the other leaders saw no point in Gorbachev’s efforts to keep the remaining 12 Soviet republics together. The Baltic republics of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia already had seceded and the failed August coup against Gorbachev by hard-line members of the Communist Party had eroded his authority and encouraged other republics to seek independence.

“All versions of the union treaty boiled down to the restoration of the old ways or to Gorbachev’s proposal of a new structure where he still would be the boss,” Shushkevich said.

Shushkevich, Yeltsin and Kravchuk had arrived at the Viskuli lodge near the border with Poland accompanied by a few senior aides on Dec. 7. Participants later described the atmosphere as tense — everyone realized that the stakes were high and they all faced the risk of being arrested on treason charges, if Gorbachev wanted.

Shushkevich noted that Eduard Shirkovsky, the head of the republic’s KGB who was at the hunting lodge, had assured him there was no threat. Years later, however, the hard-line Shirkovsky voiced regret that he didn’t order their arrest.

In the AP interview, Shushkevich said he didn’t expect Gorbachev, whose power was waning rapidly, to try to arrest them.

“I don’t think there was such a threat, given Gorbachev’s cowardice; at least I didn’t feel it,” he said.

Gorbachev said he decided against it for fear of provoking bloodshed in a volatile situation when the loyalties of the Soviet army and law enforcement were split.

“If I decided to rely on some armed structures, it would have inevitably resulted in an acute political conflict fraught with bloodshed,” he wrote.

Gorbachev blamed Yeltsin, his archrival, for spearheading the Soviet collapse in a bid to take over the Kremlin. Yeltsin, who died in 2007 at the age of 76, had defended his action by saying the USSR was doomed. The Belovezha agreement, he said, was the only way to avoid a conflict between the central government and the independence-minded republics.

Some participants in the historic meeting pointed to Ukraine’s Kravchuk as playing the pivotal role in the demise of the Soviet Union.

Ukraine had declared its sovereignty after the August coup that dramatically weakened Gorbachev’s authority. A week before the Belovezha agreement, Kravchuk was elected president of Ukraine in a vote that also overwhelmingly approved its independence from Moscow.

In the talks at the hunting lodge, Kravchuk took a forceful stand, rejecting any kind of revamped version of the Soviet Union.

“Kravchuk was focused on Ukraine’s independence,” Shushkevich said. “He was proud that Ukraine declared its independence in a referendum and he was elected president on Dec. 1, 1991.”

Sergei Shakhrai, a top Yeltsin aide, also said Ukraine’s vote played a decisive role.

“The Ukrainian independence referendum and the subsequent decision by the Ukrainian Supreme Soviet to disavow the 1922 Treaty on creation of the USSR put a political and legal completion to the process of disintegration,” Shakhrai said. “Yeltsin and Shushkevich first tried to persuade Kravchuk to maintain some form of union, but after the referendum, he wouldn’t even like to hear that word.”

After signing the agreement, Yeltsin and Kravchuk asked Shushkevich to tell Gorbachev about the deal. Yeltsin also called Soviet Defense Minister Yevgeny Shaposhnikov to discourage him from using any force if Gorbachev ordered him to do so, and later called then-U.S. President George H.W. Bush.

Shushkevich recalled that Gorbachev was livid at the news declaring the Soviet Union dead.

“Gorbachev told me in a mentor tone: ‘Do you know what the international community would say?’” Shushkevich said. “And I responded that I do know. — By that time, the conversation with Bush already started and I was hearing it. I said that Yeltsin was telling Bush about it and he (Bush) was reacting in a positive way.”

While they focused on unseating Gorbachev, the three leaders put aside disputes among themselves, but those rifts resurfaced later.

Putin, who described the collapse of the Soviet Union as “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century,” has continuously alleged that Ukraine unfairly inherited historic parts of Russia in the demise of the USSR.

When Ukraine’s Kremlin-friendly president was driven from power by protests in 2014, Russia responded by annexing Crimea and throwing its support behind a separatist insurgency in eastern Ukraine.

Amid the recent Russian troop buildup reported by Washington and Kyiv, Putin has sought guarantees from Biden that the NATO military alliance will never expand to include Ukraine, which has long sought membership. The Americans and their NATO allies said that request was a nonstarter.

“Modern Ukraine is entirely the product of the Soviet era,” Putin said in an article published in July. “We know and remember well that it was shaped -– for a significant part -– on the lands of historical Russia. It’s crystal clear that Russia was effectively robbed.”

___

Karmanau reported from Kyiv, Ukraine.

Myanmar democracy in new era as Suu Kyi sidelined by army

By GRANT PECK and ELAINE KURTENBACH

 Myanmar's leader Aung San Suu Kyi waits to address judges of the International Court of Justice on the second day of three days of hearings in The Hague, Netherlands on Dec. 11, 2019. Myanmar court on Monday, Dec. 6, 2021, sentenced ousted leader Suu Kyi to 4 years for incitement and breaking virus restrictions, then later in the day state TV announced that the country's military leader reduced the sentence by two years. (AP Photo/Peter Dejong, File)

BANGKOK (AP) — In sentencing Myanmar’s iconic democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi to prison, the country’s generals have effectively exiled her from electoral politics. But that doesn’t mean the Southeast Asian nation is back to square one in its stop-start efforts to move toward democracy.

In fact, a younger generation that came of age as the military began loosening its grip on politics and the economy and has tasted some freedoms is well positioned to carry on the struggle.

A de facto coup on Feb. 1 pushed Suu Kyi’s elected government from power, throwing the country into turmoil. But erasing the gains of a decade of opening up has proved more difficult.

People took to the streets en masse almost immediately and have continued sporadic protests since then. As a military crackdown on demonstrations grew increasingly violent, protesters moved to arm themselves.

Within days, a mix of old and new guard, including elected lawmakers who were prevented from taking their seats by the takeover, announced a shadow administration that declared itself the nation’s only legitimate government. It was very consciously assembled to be a diverse group, including representatives of ethnic minorities and one openly gay member, unusual in socially conservative Myanmar.




Aung San Suu Kyi, left, Myanmar's foreign minister and de facto leader, walks with Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, right, commander-in-chief in the airport of capital Naypyitaw, Myanmar on May 6, 2016. Myanmar court on Monday, Dec. 6, 2021, sentenced ousted leader Suu Kyi to 4 years for incitement and breaking virus restrictions, then later in the day state TV announced that the country's military leader reduced the sentence by two years. (AP Photo/Aung Shine Oo, File)
Aung San Suu Kyi, left, Myanmar's foreign minister and de facto leader, walks with Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, right, commander-in-chief in the airport of capital Naypyitaw, Myanmar on May 6, 2016. Myanmar court on Monday, Dec. 6, 2021, sentenced ousted leader Suu Kyi to 4 years for incitement and breaking virus restrictions, then later in the day state TV announced that the country's military leader reduced the sentence by two years. (AP Photo/Aung Shine Oo, File)

It, not Suu Kyi, who was arrested in the takeover, has been at the forefront of the opposition — and has garnered significant support among the general population.

While no foreign government has recognized the so-called National Unity Government, U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan met virtually with two of its representatives. And it has accomplished a kind of standoff at the U.N., which delayed action on a request by Myanmar’s military government for its representative to take its seat. The country’s current delegate has declared his allegiance to the unity government.

“The coup and its aftermath are not so much the end of a democratization process in Myanmar as they are proof that democratization has actually taken hold of the younger generation,” Priscilla Clapp, who served as the U.S. chief of mission in Myanmar from 1999 to 2002. “In fact, the coup may ultimately prove to be the dramatic end to the older generation of leadership in Myanmar.”

The pro-democracy movement now faces the challenges of continuing to resist military rule, keeping up international pressure for restoring an elected, civilian government, and consolidating support from ethnic groups that have long fought the central government.

Suu Kyi, whose pro-democracy efforts won her the Nobel Peace Prize, and her allies have played important roles in the past, even when sidelined or jailed by the generals. On Monday, the 76-year-old was convicted on charges of incitement and violating coronavirus restrictions and sentenced to four years in prison, though that was almost immediately reduced to two. She faces other charges that could see her imprisoned for life.


FILE - Protesters hold portraits of deposed Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi during an anti-coup demonstration in Mandalay, Myanmar on March 5, 2021. Myanmar court on Monday, Dec. 6, 2021, sentenced ousted leader Suu Kyi to 4 years for incitement and breaking virus restrictions, then later in the day state TV announced that the country's military leader reduced the sentence by two years. (AP Photo/File)


But the younger generation may be better placed to carry the mantle anyway.

Unlike their elders, younger people in Myanmar, especially those in the cities, have spent most of their lives without having to worry about being imprisoned for speaking their minds. They have had access to mobile phones and Facebook and grew up believing the country was moving toward greater, not less democracy.

They also seem more willing to reach out to Myanmar’s ethnic minorities. Not only did the unity government include ethnic minority officials in its Cabinet, but it sought out alliances with the powerful ethnic militias, which are fighting for autonomy and rights over their resource-rich lands.

“Even as they are fighting against the military takeover, they are debating among themselves to determine the outlines of a new form of a more democratic and ethnically diverse political system,” said Clapp, who is also a senior adviser to the U.S. Institute of Peace and the Asia Society. “This did not happen with earlier rebellions against military rule before the people had experience with democratic institutions that gave the public a voice.”

Suu Kyi’s own reputation abroad was deeply marred by her seemingly condoning, or at times even defending, abuses committed by the military against the Muslim Rohingya minority while her government was in power. She disputes allegations that troops killed Rohingya civilians, torched houses and raped women.

The unity government has also been criticized for seeming to neglect the long-oppressed Rohingya, and it remains to be seen how its uneasy alliance with ethnic groups will play out.

But Suu Kyi’s handling of the Rohingya is just one element that complicates her legacy.

An icon of resistance during her 15 years under house arrest, Suu Kyi agreed to work alongside the generals after she was freed. It was a gamble that left Myanmar’s fledgling democracy in limbo, with the military keeping control of key ministries and reserving a large share of seats in parliament.

Some overseas admirers were disappointed that during its time in power Suu Kyi’s government used British colonial-era security laws to prosecute dissidents and critical journalists, in part of “an ongoing pattern of silencing dissent,” said Jane Ferguson, a lecturer at Australian National University.

In seizing power, the military claimed there was massive fraud in the 2020 election that saw Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy win in a landslide. It said that justified the takeover under a constitution that allows it to seize power in emergencies — though independent election observers did not detect any major irregularities. Critics also assert that the takeover bypassed the legal process for declaring the kind of emergency that allows the army to step in.

Security forces have since quashed nonviolent nationwide protests with deadly force, killing about 1,300 civilians, according to a tally compiled by the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners.

Despite the risks, the verdict against Suu Kyi, who remains popular, provoked more spirited protests. In the city of Mandalay on Monday, demonstrators chanted slogans and sang songs popularized during pro-democracy protests in 1988.

“In Yangon, we are seeing local residents resume banging pots and pans late at night in protest,” said Jason Tower, Myanmar country director for the U.S. Institute of Peace. “These types of moves by the junta are also a key driver and motivation for local people to join people’s defense forces.”

Those forces, which began as a way to protect neighborhoods and villages from the depredations of government troops, are also being supported by the opposition unity government that hopes to turn them into a federal army one day.

In the meantime, the military will keep trying to “terrorize the public into obedience,” said Christina Fink, a professor of international affairs at George Washington University. “They have done so successfully in the past, but this time the opposition is more widespread and takes many different forms so it has been much harder for the regime to achieve its goal.”

MEDICAL INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX $CIENCE

Study can’t confirm lab results for many cancer experiments

By CARLA K. JOHNSON

FILE - A technician holds a laboratory mouse at the Jackson Laboratory, Jan. 24, 2006, in Bar Harbor, Maine. The lab ships more than two million mice a year to qualified researchers. Eight years ago, a team of researchers launched a project to carefully repeat influential lab experiments in cancer research. They recreated 50 experiments, the type of work with mice and test tubes that sets the stage for new cancer drugs. They reported the results Tuesday, Dec. 7, 2021: About half the scientific claims didn’t hold up.

(AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty, File)

Eight years ago, a team of researchers launched a project to carefully repeat early but influential lab experiments in cancer research.

They recreated 50 experiments, the type of preliminary research with mice and test tubes that sets the stage for new cancer drugs. The results reported Tuesday: About half the scientific claims didn’t hold up.

“The truth is we fool ourselves. Most of what we claim is novel or significant is no such thing,” said Dr. Vinay Prasad, a cancer doctor and researcher at the University of California, San Francisco, who was not involved in the project.

It’s a pillar of science that the strongest findings come from experiments that can be repeated with similar results.

In reality, there’s little incentive for researchers to share methods and data so others can verify the work, said Marcia McNutt, president of the National Academy of Sciences. Researchers lose prestige if their results don’t hold up to scrutiny, she said.

And there are built-in rewards for publishing discoveries.

But for cancer patients, it can raise false hopes to read headlines of a mouse study that seems to promise a cure “just around the corner,” Prasad said. “Progress in cancer is always slower than we hope.”

The new study reflects on shortcomings early in the scientific process, not with established treatments. By the time cancer drugs reach the market, they’ve been tested rigorously in large numbers of people to make sure they are safe and they work.

For the project, the researchers tried to repeat experiments from cancer biology papers published from 2010 to 2012 in major journals such as Cell, Science and Nature.

Overall, 54% of the original findings failed to measure up to statistical criteria set ahead of time by the Reproducibility Project, according to the team’s study published online Tuesday by eLife. The nonprofit eLife receives funding from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, which also supports The Associated Press Health and Science Department.

Among the studies that did not hold up was one that found a certain gut bacteria was tied to colon cancer in humans. Another was for a type of drug that shrunk breast tumors in mice. A third was a mouse study of a potential prostate cancer drug.

A co-author of the prostate cancer study said the research done at Sanford Burnham Prebys research institute has held up to other scrutiny.

“There’s plenty of reproduction in the (scientific) literature of our results,” said Erkki Ruoslahti, who started a company now running human trials on the same compound for metastatic pancreatic cancer.

This is the second major analysis by the Reproducibility Project. In 2015, they found similar problems when they tried to repeat experiments in psychology.

Study co-author Brian Nosek of the Center for Open Science said it can be wasteful to plow ahead without first doing the work to repeat findings.


This image provided by the National Institutes of Health shows an osteosarcoma cell with DNA in blue, energy factories (mitochondria) in yellow and actin filaments, part of the cellular skeleton, in purple. Eight years ago, a team of researchers launched a project to carefully repeat influential lab experiments in cancer research. They recreated 50 experiments, the type of work with mice and test tubes that sets the stage for new cancer drugs. They reported the results Tuesday, Dec. 7, 2021: About half the scientific claims didn’t hold up. (National Institute of Health via AP)

“We start a clinical trial, or we spin up a startup company, or we trumpet to the world ‘We have a solution,’ before we’ve done the follow-on work to verify it,” Nosek said.

The researchers tried to minimize differences in how the cancer experiments were conducted. Often, they couldn’t get help from the scientists who did the original work when they had questions about which strain of mice to use or where to find specially engineered tumor cells.

“I wasn’t surprised, but it is concerning that about a third of scientists were not helpful, and, in some cases, were beyond not helpful,” said Michael Lauer, deputy director of extramural research at the National Institutes of Health.

NIH will try to improve data sharing among scientists by requiring it of grant-funded institutions in 2023, Lauer said.

“Science, when it’s done right, can yield amazing things,” Lauer said.

For now, skepticism is the right approach, said Dr. Glenn Begley, a biotechnology consultant and former head of cancer research at drugmaker Amgen. A decade ago, he and other in-house scientists at Amgen reported even lower rates of confirmation when they tried to repeat published cancer experiments.

Cancer research is difficult, Begley said, and “it is very easy for researchers to be attracted to results that look exciting and provocative, results that appear to further support their favorite idea as to how cancer should work, but that are just wrong.”

This photo provided by the National Institutes of Health shows a three-dimensional culture of human breast cancer cells, with DNA stained blue and a protein in the cell surface membrane stained green. Eight years ago, a team of researchers launched a project to carefully repeat influential lab experiments in cancer research. They recreated 50 experiments, the type of work with mice and test tubes that sets the stage for new cancer drugs. They reported the results Tuesday, Dec. 7, 2021: About half the scientific claims didn’t hold up. (National Institutes of Health via AP)

___

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

NASA: Hubble telescope regains full capability

By Paul Brinkmann

The Hubble Space Telescope captures the Eagle Nebula's Pillars of Creation, one of Hubble's most iconic and popular images. Photo courtesy of NASA | License Photo

Dec. 7 (UPI) -- The Hubble Space Telescope has returned to full operation after more than a month of interruptions due to communication trouble with the orbiting observatory, NASA said Tuesday.

The historic space telescope, which has revealed startling images of stars, galaxies and other space objects since 1990, sent error codes to NASA starting Oct. 23. The observatory instruments shut automatically in a safe mode Oct. 25 as the communication problems continued.


The Hubble Space Telescope captures in infrared light the Eagle Nebula's Pillars of Creation, one of Hubble's most iconic and popular images. Photo courtesy of NASA | License Photo

"NASA's Hubble Space Telescope team recovered the Imaging Spectrograph on Monday ... and is now operating with all four active instruments collecting science," NASA said in a press release.



"The team will continue work on developing and testing changes to instrument software that would allow them to conduct science operations" even if members encounter more communication problems, NASA said.

NASA plans to launch the James Webb Space Telescope from the European Space Agency's launch site in South America on Dec. 22. It would provide a new, more powerful space observatory. NASA has hoped that the Hubble and Webb telescopes would work in tandem.


The Hubble Space Telescope captures an image of the giant nebula NGC 2014 and its neighbor NGC 2020 in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way. Photo courtesy of NASA | License Photo

The Hubble Space Telescope captured this image of the Galaxy UGC 2885, which may be the largest in our universe. Photo by B. Holwerda/NASA


Hubble also experienced a month-long pause this summer when one of its main computers shut down, but NASA was able to switch to a backup computer and restart the spacecraft.

 

 

Magnus Couldn't Believe This Blunder! | World Chess Championship Game 9

Dec 7, 2021

Chess.com

Wow! Another dramatic day in Dubai as Nepo returned with a fresh haircut, a new opening and rapid play. Join Fabiano Caruana, Robert Hess and Danny Rensch as they recap another day of chess in our Coinbase Rapid Recap!

FIDE World Championship details:

https://go.chess.com/FWC2021

Magnus Carlsen defeats Ian Nepomniachtchi in Game 9 of World Chess Championship – as it happened

Nepomniachtchi makes fatal blunder in Game 9
Norwegian leads 6-3 in best-of-14 title showdown

 

Ian Nepomniachtchi (left) suffered a third defeat in four games to Magnus Carlsen on Tuesday in their world championship match. Photograph: Giuseppe Cacace/AFP/Getty Images
Bryan Armen Graham
@bryanagraham
Tue 7 Dec 2021 17.28 GMT

First published on Tue 7 Dec 2021 11.35 GMT
17h agoNepomniachtchi: 'Just some insanely bad luck'
18h agoCarlsen: 'Pressure gets to everybody'
18h agoNepomniachtchi resigns!
19h agoNepomniachtchi blunders (27. c5?)!
22h agoGame 9 is under way with an English Opening!
22h agoThe format
22h agoPreamble

La Palma volcano, live updates today: eruption, tsunami warning and latest news | Canary Islands

AS USA
Update 7 December 2021

 
Good morning and welcome to our live coverage of the eruption of the Cumbre Vieja volcano on the Canary Island of La Palma. It has now been over 11 weeks since the volcano began erupting on 19 September.

The lava flowing from the Cumbre Vieja now covers approximately 1,155 hectares of land on La Palma, in addition to forming close to 50 hectares of deltas off the coast of the island.

Nearly 3,000 buildings have now been destroyed by the lava stream, according to figures compiled by the EU's Copernicus Earth observation programme.

Update on volcano in La Palma: latest news from Cumbre Vieja eruption

Headlines

- Local airline Binter cancels flights due to ash cloud. Will resume operations when safe to do so.

- Access to exclusion zone closed until further notice

- 15 earthquakes registered on Tuesday morning, three rated at a magnitude of 3.5 in the Fuencaliente and Villa de Mazo areas.

- Lava continues to flow west from the main Cumbre Vieja vent, mostly through lava tubes.

- Cumbre Vieja volcano has been erupting for over 11 weeks

- Early-December holiday weekend has seen tourists flock to La Palma to see the volcano first hand.

- Just over 2,700 buildings destroyed on La Palma, according to Copernicus Earth observation programme
Useful information

- Expert in volcanology speaks to AS about the effects of lava reaching the sea

- The lowdown on the active volcanoes on the Canary Islands

- Where are most volcanoes located on Earth and how are they formed?

La Palma eruption: related articles


La Palma volcano eruption: drone flies low over rivers of lava


La Palma eruption: new lava flow races down side of volcano



La Palma eruption: Cumbre Vieja volcano claims life of volunteer

Where are most volcanoes located?
How are volcanoes formed? Where are they most likely to be located on Earth?
AS USA's Greg Heilman takes a look

Forces from the Spanish military have been deployed to La Palma to help with the removal of ash from communities across the island. While, many were luck that their homes were not destroyed by the river of lava, thousands of structures have become buried under piles of ash that can cause many structural issues.

Additionally, it is critical that the ash be removed quickly because rain could create sort of a concrete like substance that would make its removal even more difficult.




Will a tsunami hit the island of La Palma or the US East Coast?

Concerns over the seismic activity causing a tsunami on the island of La Palma has been a troubling prospect for scientist. However, the risk remains low. Additionally some reports of the volcano creating a tsunami on the East Coast of the US have also circulated.

Politifact released a fact check on this reporting yesterday and after evaluating the origins of the claim reporters said: "We rate this claim False." Additionally, the US government agency, National Tsunami Warning Center, tasked with monitoring these sorts of extreme whether events reported on 19 September, "There is NO tsunami danger for the U.S. East Coast at this time, following the eruption of Cumbre Vieja volcano, La Palma, Canary Islands. The National Tsunami Warning Center is monitoring this situation, and based on all available data, including nearby water level observations, there is no tsunami hazard for the U.S. East Coast."

The claims began on social media, which increasingly is becoming a hotbed of misinformation.



Could Mount Teide on Tenerife erupt?

Mount Teide, on the island of Tenerife is less than 80 miles away as the crow flies from the vent on La Palma and it is also an active volcano - although its last eruption was in 1909, from the El Chinyero vent on the Santiago Ridge. So what are the risks Mount Teide could erupt in the wake of the eruption on La Palma?

Very low, apparently. According to Robin George Andrew, a volcanologist who spoke to The Guardian, volcanoes are "not like bombs: they don't set one another off, even if they are somewhat nearby." He says that if there were an eruption on another island it would be simply be a coincidence, and a "remarkable and improbable" one at that.

Even though the eruption on La Palma won't set off Mount Teide, will the volcano on Tenerife erupt at some point? Nobody can say for sure, but it seems likely that Mount Teide WILL erupt in the future, though eruptions have only occurred at a rate of four to six per 1000 years in the past 30,000 years. And they were low hazard eruptions.

There are currently active fumaroles at the summit of Mount Teide, emitting sulphur dioxide and other gases and in 2003 there was an increase of seismic activity and a rift opened on the north-east side of the volcano, though no eruption followed. As ever with volcanoes the best thing is to listen to what the experts have to say.

Changing wind conditions on La Palma

In this hypnotic video from the Canary Islands Meteorological Service you can see the changing wind conditions this afternoon, which is what led to local airline Binter cancelling its flights, as it was unsure about safety with the ash cloud being produced by the volcano.

The tweet reads: "Surprising timelapse video recorded this afternoon close to El Paso by our colleague in La Palma, Fernando Bullón. The changes in the wind at different heights can be seen, as well as the clouds around the volcano on La Palma. #WeAllStandWithLaPalma




Binter cancels flights

Local airline Binter has cancelled flights to and from La Palma due to the ash cloud from the volcano. Earlier in the day the wind was blowing the ash to the west, away from the airport, however the airline has decided to take full precautions and has cancelled its remaining flights for today.

Binter said in this tweet, announcing the decision, that it would begin operating flights when it is safe to do so.




Video of the eruption

The volcano grumbling on this afternoon, with the ash being ejected clearly visible. It's being pushed out to the west and the open Atlantic Ocean by the wind.

La Palma airport open UPDATE - Binter cancels flights

The airport on La Palma is in operation today, with the wind pushing the column of ash from the volcano to the west. The airport is on the east side of the island, just south of Santa Cruz de La Palma.

These departure times are from AENA, Spain's airport operator. You'll note that while the airport is open, the flight times have moved around a bit, though it's not clear that is actually due to the volcano.


Lava destroys more buildings

Lava from the Cumbre Vieja volcano that erupted 79 days ago on La Palma has destroyed 60 buildings in the last few hours, according to the technical director of the Canary Islands Volcanic Emergency Plan (Pevolca) on Tuesday.




Video: La Palma devoured by lava

Reuters - This drone footage shows the devastation left behind by the Cumbre Vieja volcano on La Palma.



Government sends €2.5 million to La Palma researchers

On Tuesday, the Spanish government approved the direct granting of aid worth €2.5 million to research centres working on the island of La Palma since the eruption of the Cumbre Vieja volcano.



SAVE THE DOGS
Award-winning photographer Emilio Morenatti has posted a photo of abandoned dogs not too far away from the lava flowing out of the volcano on the Canary island of La Palma.




Drone video of lava reaching Las Hoyas

Windy weather conditions meant that authorities were unable to send drones up into the air on Tuesday morning but here were have aerial footage taken on Monday of Cumbre Vieja errupting and lava flows encroaching on the Las Hoyas district on La Palma.

Lava stream claims an additional 26.7 hectares

The mass of molten lava on La Palma grew by 26.7 hectares between Saturday and Monday, according to IGN data and visualised here in this excellent graphic by Pedro Suárez. In the image we can see the area already covered by lava in light purple and the land claimed by lava over the weekend in red. The total surface area now under lava is believed to be 1181.59 hectares.

Messages of support and solidarity from Madrid schoolchildren

Madrid schoolchildren have been getting involved with events in La Palma. They have made their own cards with messages of support - 6,800 drawings and cards have been sent to other children on the island from the capital.

Who owns the new bit of land in the sea?

The lava delta that has formed in the ocean belongs to the Spanish state, under the Law of the Coasts, which states that land or islands that are created due to "natural causes" in the sea automatically become property of the state.



15 tremors registered on La Palma on Tuesday morning

The National Geographical Institute (IGN) reported 15 tremors or minor earthquakes on La Palma on Tuesday morning - three of them were rated magnitude 3.5 in Fuencaliente, and Villa de Mazo.

The National Security Departament has confirmed that lava streams continue to flow in the southern and central parts of the exclusion zone as well as on the delta, while there are no changes in the northern zone.

South lava stream has come to a halt

The new lava stream which emerged on Saturday north of Cogote mountain, and which destroyed a large number of houses, has lost momentum while the southern lava flow has come to a halt.

According to Pevolca officials Miguel Ángel Morcuende and Carmen López, the main movement of lava is currently in the central zone, and mostly through lava tubes which is why they are not seen over land.




Volcanic Nativity Scene

The volcanologists of the National Geographic Institute, who have been working day-in, day-out since the start of the eruption on the 19 September, have built a Nativity Scene entirely from lava and pyroclastic materials (cooled, we understand...), in order to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas.




Bird's eye view of La Palma in 3D

A neat fly-over of the map of the lava flows from the Cumbre Vieja eruption site and down to the Atlantic Ocean showing how they've grown over the past two weeks.

Info from Copernicus overlaid onto Spain's National Geographic Institute map. (Talking of the National Geographic Institute's maps, you can get very cool relief maps of the Canary Islands, as well as other parts of Spain from their online shop - will be interesting to see when they release the updated map with the new land from the lava flows on it)



Tourists numbers up on La Palma during December mini-break

The number of tourists visiting La Palma during the December 'puente'* have equalled those recorded at the height of summer last August. Officials say that hotel bookings in the east and north are up with 85% occupancy from the weekend to Wednesday. Binter, the Canary Islands' principal airline, has scheduled 32 extra flights between La Palma and Tenerife Norte and Gran Canaria between 5 and 9 December while Fred Olsen will be putting on two extra ferry services between Los Cristianos and Santa Cruz de La Palma during the mini-break.

*Spaniards describe a long weekend created by a public holiday as a 'puente', meaning bridge. Strictly to be a 'puente' the bank holiday has to fall such that by taking a day's vacation it creates a 'bridge' to the public holiday from a weekend, however in common usage 'puente' now just means any long weekend created by a public holiday, even when it falls on a Friday or a Monday.

The 6th and 8th of December are public holidays in Spain, meaning the 7th can be taken to bridge the gap between them. This year as the 6th is a Monday, it connects perfectly to create 5 days off, only needing one day's vacation, on the Tuesday.



Time-lapse video of Monday's erruption

INVOLCAN have treated us to more time-lapse footage of Cumbre Vieja volcano in action - here, a 13-minute video recorded in time lapse mode at Cabeza de Vaca early on Monday evening.



Access to La Palma exclusion zone closed

La Palma local government announced on Tuesday that access to the exclusion zones affected by the volcanic errupcion is probihited until further notice. Until conditions improve, residents will not be allowed to pick up belongings from their homes and all access, via land or sea, is not allowed both in the north and south regions. Access was permitted on Monday, to those in possession of a permit, due to the reduced levels of toxic gases.