Rights court hits Argentina, Guatemala, Ecuador governments

• ASSOCIATED PRESS • DECEMBER 22, 2021


(Wikipedia)


SAN JOSE, Costa Rica — Two past right-wing governments in Latin America and one from the left have been found guilty by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which on Tuesday said the countries' current governments shouid make reparations.

The military dictatorship that ruled Argentina from 1976 to 1983 was found guilty in the forced disappearance of a couple and of taking their children. Guatemala's right-wing government of the 1980s was found guilty of a massacre. And the recent left-wing government of Ecuador's Rafael Correa was castigated for violating the rights of journalists.

The court, based in Costa Rica, determined that Argentina's military government systematically took and hid the children of suspected leftists who had been arrested and presumably killed during Operation Condor, which involved several allied right-wing governments in the region.

It said the government should make reparations to the son and daughter of Mario Roger Julien Cáceres and Victoria Lucía Grisonas Andrijauskaite, saying it had unjustifiably delayed efforts to clarify the couple's disappearance. It said the government should renew efforts to clarify the case and find the bodies.

The Guatemala case involved an army massacre of at least 38 men, women and children in the village of Los Josefinos on April 30, 1982 — a moment when troops were conducting a scorched-earth campaign to wipe out any support for leftist rebels. Other villagers fled, some seeking refuge abroad.

The court said criminal investigations into the massacre didn't start until nearly 14 years after the events.

The court said Guatemala should pay indemnities and court costs and speed up legal proceedings, as well as building a monument in the area where victims were buried in a mass grave and create an audiovisual documentary of the massacre.

The government of former Ecuadoran President Rafael Correa was found guilty of violating the right to free expression and other rights for prosecuting a journalist who had criticized him and executives of the newspaper that employed him.

Journalist Emilio Palacio Urrutia and executives Nicolás Pérez Lapentti, César Enrique Pérez Barriga and Carlos Eduardo Pérez Barriga were convicted of defaming Correa in a 2011 article published by the newspaper El Universo. They were sentenced to prison and fined. Palacios wound up fleeing the country.

The court found that the article was the sort of opinion piece that should enjoy proetection as a part of "democratic debate."

The court said the convictions should be annulled and that the country shoul find non-criminal avenues to protect the honor of officials.

NIGERIA

Your Nyama-Nyama, Not Ours: A Brief History Of The Dirty Politics Of Pandemics

By
• Abubakar Adam Ibrahim

Thu, 23 Dec 2021 

Sometime in March 1918, while the first World War ravaged Europe, a US soldier, Albert Gitchell, a company cook at Fort Riley, in Kansas was going about his business when he suffered from flu symptoms.

On March 4, or March 11 in some accounts, Gitchell was admitted into the camp’s infirmary complaining of a “bad cold,” a fever, sore throat, headache and muscular pains.

Not long after, Corporal Lee W. Drake reported to the same desk with identical symptoms, including temperatures running at 39.4 degrees Celsius.

Within days, over 500 soldiers had reported the same exact symptoms. And shortly the figure climbed to over a thousand. A new pandemic was born. Some of these patients died, others survived, including Mr Gitchell, who lived to the handsome age of 78.

Some of the recovered soldiers were shipped off to Europe to fight a war, armed with their guns and ammo—and a deadly virus in their system.

That, dear reader, is how what the world would come to know as the Spanish Flu was born. It spread worldwide, killing some 50 million people within a couple of years. It reached Nigeria on September 14th 1918 (according to Public Record Office, London) breaking out amongst dockworkers in Lagos. With the city gripped in the feverish hold of the pandemic, many residents hopped on trains to flee, unwittingly carrying the virus to train stops: Abeokuta, Ibadan, Illorin, Bida, Jebba, Zaria, Kano, and Bauchi. By December that year, it had reached all corners of the newly formed country and by September 1919, the Public Record Office officially put the death toll in Nigeria at 199, 325.

To maintain troop morale, the countries in the war suppressed reports of the pandemic. And with Spain not being in the war, when the virus made its way through France to Madrid where it infected King Alfonso XIII, the Spanish press, unbridled by wartime censorship, reported the pandemic in full.

No longer able to suppress the reports, the rest of the world jumped in and branded the disease “The Spanish Flu.” Ironically, the Spaniards, believing the virus jumped from France to Spain called it the “French Flu.” That name did not stick anywhere outside of Spain.

The dirty politics of pandemics as history has demonstrated has always dictated that the ground zero of most pandemics tends to shift the buck and blame it on others to deflect responsibility.

When COVID-19 broke out in December 2019, former American President Donald Trump tried to replicate the 1918 model of pandemic politics when he tweeted about “The Chinese virus.” That tweet has been credited with the rise of hate crimes against Asians, especially in the US.

Yes, since 2019, COVID-19 Patient Zero has been placed in Wuhan, China. The fact though remains that the origins of the COVID-19 virus remain a mystery and a subject of scientific contention.

Could it have its origins in Europe? Some scientists think so. The Emerging Infectious Disease Journal for instance reports that on December 5, 2019, days before the identified Patient Zero began exhibiting symptoms, an oral swab was taken from a 4-year-old boy outside Milan, Italy. He was suspected of having measles. However, months later, that sample tested positive for coronavirus RNA.

Researchers in France have suggested samples collected from patients in November 2019 tested positive for coronavirus and researchers in Spain said they found traces of the virus in Barcelona sewers earlier in the year.

There is a reason countries don’t like to identify as ground zero of pandemics. Apart from the sense of guilt, the economic and political ostracization these may cause are often costly and damaging. The taint on the nation’s image often takes years to wipe off.

The reason is personified by the tragic and sad story of Mary Mallon, who some American tabloids described as “the most hapless and yet most dangerous woman in America.”

Mary was an Irish-born cook who migrated to the US in 1884. Of the eight families that employed her, seven of them were struck with typhoid fevers, infecting dozens of people and resulting in the death of some. In three months as a cook at Sloane Maternity in Manhattan, she contaminated at least 25 people, doctors, nurses and staff. Two of them died.


It was discovered that Mary was the first “healthy carrier” in the US of Salmonella typhi, which causes typhoid fever. She was branded “Typhoid Mary” and became the subject of jokes, satire and mockery in the papers.

In the end, she was forced into quarantine on two separate occasions on North Brother Island for a total of 26 years where she died in 1938 alone, without family or friends.

Of recent, A good number of African countries, where COVID-19 is a pandemic on paper, have had to suffer the ignominy of being labelled as vehicles of the Omicron strain. How did South Africa end up with the tag of Omicron Ground Zero? Because local scientists working alongside their colleagues in Botswana were one of the first in the world to positively identify the new strain.

Within days of that discovery, for which these scientists should be applauded, several African countries were hit with travel bans. Canada, the UK and Saudi Arabia slapped one on Nigeria before Nigerians could even learn the name of the new strain. The UK has since backtracked and delisted some 13 countries from its “Red List.”

It follows a narrative that is being pushed. On November 2nd, 2021, The Economist published an article, “The Pandemic’s True Death Toll” which used a model to suggest that death tolls in Africa from COVID-19 are around the 800,000 mark as compared to the 200, 000 thousand official figures. Africans did not take that well. The reactions on Twitter by Africans were as intelligent as they were dramatic. Yes, Africa is large but 800,000 deaths on this continent will not go unnoticed. After all, funerals are a big deal here.


From AIDS to Ebola, Africa has been a favourite target. No country wants to be the Typhoid Mary amongst the comity of nations. It is expensive. China, on whom that tag is being forced over the COVID-19 situation saw its economy shrink for the first time since 1992 in the first quarter after the outbreak. Between January and March, its GDP fell 6.8 per cent, reversing a 6 per cent expansion in the fourth quarter of 2019. A lot of this is directly attributed to the pressures of the pandemic. The pressure of being branded with a bad name is unquantifiable.

The weaponization of disease is an old tradition, starting from when in 1763 British colonialists gifted blankets from the smallpox ward to some Indian chiefs, causing a pandemic amongst the native Americans. The weaponization of pandemics for economic reasons may be a more recent development and Africa, without the media machinery of the West, is now at the butt end of this Omicron debacle. Those travel bans imposed on Nigeria rather hastily by some countries have been damaging for Nigeria’s economy and its image. There is no remedy to counter the dirty politics of pandemic that is greater than developing the economic might to survive such ostracization, long or short-term, and the scientific competence to establish that this Omicron nyama-nyama, is not ours but someone else’s. We should not be made to pay for it.

Homeless encampment near Interstate 90 in east Spokane will stay put for now

UPDATED: Wed., Dec. 22, 2021

Campers who had set up tents at Spokane City Hall set up their tents again in an empty lot in east Spokane Thursday after they were warned to leave city hall. The camp had been at Spokane City Hall where participants were protesting the city’s homeless response. (Jesse Tinsley/The Spokesman-Review)

By Adam Shanks

The Washington Department of Transportation won’t immediately clear a homeless encampment from land near Interstate 90, but does plan to eventually disband it.

Despite posting a 72-hour notice for people to move along that expired on Monday, the department said its first priority is to ensure the camp near Second Avenue and Freya Street does not grow.

“It’s our desire and goal, related to homeless camps, to have them removed in a timely and humane way from WSDOT right of way. We are not an organization that deals with social services, nor do we have law enforcement resources,” Ryan Overton, a WSDOT spokesman, said in a statement.

The encampment sprang up last week after the city threatened to clear the property of those who erected tents outside City Hall in protest of the city’s homeless response. Dubbed “Camp Hope 2.0,” the encampment mirrored a similar protest that occurred in 2018.

Jewels Helping Hands, a homeless service provider, has maintained a presence at both the City Hall and I-90 encampments. There were 82 people at the encampment Wednesday morning, according to the organization.

Its founder, Julie Garcia, fears the bitter cold forecast for the Spokane area next week and its potential impact on people experiencing homelessness.

She said her organization is searching for a building in which to operate a shelter or a plot of land for a tent.

Garcia encouraged the city to expand shelter options.

“We’ll help them; if they open up a place, we’ll fill it up for them,” Garcia said.

The city broke up the encampment outside City Hall because it alleged tents were blocking access to City Hall and the site had become a health hazard.

The Department of Transportation hopes to walk the fine line between appeasing the encampment’s neighbors and treating its tenants with dignity. The department will take action if the camp becomes a safety issue, Overton said.

“We are sensitive to both the neighbors and those in the camp and hope that through our collaboration with all parties, that there can be a positive and timely outcome for all,” Overton wrote.

The current forecast for Spokane calls for low temperatures to drop into the single digits overnight on Monday, according to the National Weather Service.

“Next week is very scary,” Garcia said.

Campers in tents at Spokane City Hall given notice to leave by Thursday

The notice to remove property was issued due to growing safety and health concerns within the protest area, a spokesperson for the City of Spokane said.

Something went wrong.

Author: Megan Carroll, Amanda Roley

Published: 3:19 PM PST December 14, 2021
Updated: 5:52 PM PST December 15, 2021

SPOKANE, Wash. — Campers in front of Spokane City Hall protesting what they say is a lack of adequate shelter space in the city have been given notice to leave.

After 48 hours, or by 9:54 a.m. on Thursday, the City of Spokane is asking campers to remove their belongings and informing them that any items left behind could be discarded. Brian Coddington, a spokesperson for the City of Spokane, explained the notice to remove property was issued due to growing safety and health concerns within the tent city protest.

Homeless residents and advocates have been camped out in front of city hall since Thursday in hopes of encouraging the city to take action in increasing new shelters for those enduring the cold winter months.

According to Coddington, the notice to vacate came amid health concerns.

"The communication that's been made with those who are out front is related to growing health and safety concerns, and considerations, both for sanitation and garbage issues, but also for the communicable diseases," Coddington said. "So COVID, but also other communicable diseases."

Code enforcement will throw out any garbage left behind, and anyone leaving personal belongings after the deadline can have code enforcement store their property. Coddington said those with property being held by code enforcement will be able to retrieve it for free.

Coddington said the city has added beds through additional shelter space as well as renting out hotel rooms, but those protesting contend its not enough.

According to Coddington, they can still protest outside City Hall after Thursday morning's deadline, but they won't be able to have their belongings such as tents on the property. They also will have to make plans for where they will be staying.

"I'm moving with Jewels [Helping Hands] to a new location right now and most of them, certain ones are staying behind to finish the protest here and some are going to move to a different location to do another one there," said Shannon Jones, who took part in the protest outside of City Hall.

This comes several years after a similar protest outside city hall in December 2018. Demonstrators set up about two dozen tents in front of city hall in late November before Spokane police and city crews cleared the encampment.

Late homeless activist Alfredo Llamedo was one of those who took part in the protest. He was arrested for obstructing a law enforcement officer during the clean-up process, along with a 20-year-old man.


Organizers have referred to both protests in front of city hall as "Camp Hope."

Coddington said on Monday that low-barrier shelter availability has ranged from 91 to 100 spaces over the past three nights. Low-barrier shelters are facilities that do not require people to be sober or attend chapel. At that time, Coddington said the city had not established a timeline for moving the tents.

According to Coddington, there were 104 total beds available Wednesday, with 92 of those being low-barrier beds and 36 being for young adults. Twenty were available for households or women with children. Thirty-nine were low-barrier beds for men, while there were no low-barrier beds for women without children.

Coddington also says there's more bed space in the works.

"Mayor Woodward proposed a new low-barrier shelter outside of the downtown core. In that budget was funding for that and the council did approve that as part of the budget on Monday. So, that is something that's coming to us in the next year," Coddington said.

However, on Tuesday, Hope House spokesperson Raelynn Barden said the shelter in downtown Spokane has 100 beds for women that have been at full capacity for the last week. On Monday night, staff turned two people away as the shelter was full.

Some homeless residents who are taking part in the protest say they have not sought shelter space, while others say they have been turned away due to barriers at shelters. At a meeting on Monday night, Spokane City Council adopted a resolution to offer 40 hotel rooms when the 24/7 Cannon Street shelter is full.


Related Articles
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Wreck of last U.S. slave ship mostly intact off Alabama coast, researchers find

The Clotilda was the last ship known to transport African captives to the American South for enslavement.

In this undated image released by SEARCH Inc., maritime archaeologist Kyle Lent examines a wooden plank from the hull of Clotilda, in delta waters north of Mobile Bay, Ala.

Daniel Fiore / SEARCH Inc. via AP


Dec. 22, 2021
By The Associated Press

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — Researchers studying the wreckage of the last U.S. slave ship, buried in mud on the Alabama coast since it was scuttled in 1860, have made the surprising discovery that most of the wooden schooner remains intact, including the pen that was used to imprison African captives during the brutal journey across the Atlantic Ocean.

While the upper portion of the two-masted Clotilda is gone, the section below deck where the captured Africans and stockpiles were held is still largely in one piece after being buried for decades in a section of river that hasn’t been dredged, said maritime archaeologist James Delgado of the Florida-based SEARCH Inc.


At least two-thirds of the ship remains, and the existence of the unlit and unventilated slave pen, built during the voyage by the addition of a bulkhead where people were held as cargo below the main deck for weeks, raises questions about whether food and water containers, chains and even human DNA could remain in the hull, said Delgado.

“It’s a stunning revelation,” he said in an interview.

This sonar image created by SEARCH Inc. and released by the Alabama Historical Commission shows the remains of the Clotilda, the last known U.S. ship involved in the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Researchers studying the wreckage have made the surprising discovery that most of the wooden schooner remains intact in a river near Mobile, Ala. including the pen that was used to imprison African captives during the brutal journey across the Atlantic Ocean.Alabama Historical Commission via AP

The discovery enhances the research value of the Clotilda’s remains and sets them apart from all other wrecks, Delgado said. The finding was confirmed in a report that was provided to The Associated Press and led to the site becoming part of the National Register of Historic Places in November.

“It’s the most intact (slave ship) wreck ever discovered,” he said. “It’s because it’s sitting in the Mobile-Tensaw Delta with fresh water and in mud that protected it that it’s still there.”

For Joycelyn Davis, a sixth-generation granddaughter of African captive Charlie Lewis and vice president of the Clotilda Descendants Association, the story of what happened more than 160 years ago is best told through the people who were involved, not a sunken ship. But she said she’s excited to learn more about what has been discovered, adding: “I think it’s going to be a surprise for us all.”


The Clotilda was the last ship known to transport African captives to the American South for enslavement. Nearly 90 feet in length, it departed Mobile, Alabama, for an illegal trip to purchase people decades after Congress outlawed such trade in 1808.

The ship had been sent across the ocean on a voyage financed by a wealthy businessman whose descendants remain prominent in Mobile. The Clotilda’s captain transferred its human cargo off the ship once it arrived in Alabama and set fire to the vessel to hide evidence of the journey. But most of the ship didn’t catch fire and remained in the river.

Shown on navigational charts since the 1950s, the wreckage was publicly identified as that of Clotilda in 2019 and has been explored and researched since then, Delgado said.

The state has set aside $1 million for preservation and research, and additional work planned at the site in early 2022 could show what’s inside the hull, Delgado said. But far more work is needed to determine whether the ship could ever be pulled out of the mud and put on display, as some have suggested.

“Generally, raising is a very expensive proposition. My sense is that while it has survived, it is more fragile than people think,” said Delgado. “A recovery could be a very delicate operation and also a very expensive and lengthy process.”

Freed after the South lost the Civil War, some of the enslaved Africans who were transported to America on the Clotilda settled in a community they started called Africatown USA a few miles north of downtown Mobile.

A documentary about the now-impoverished community by Alabama-born filmmaker Margaret Brown titled “Descendant” will premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in January, and descendants of the Clotilda captives are planning an annual gathering in February. Work is underway on a new museum that’s meant to be a catalyst for tourism and new development in the area.

Norway’s pangolin stance spotlights Chinese pharma

CONTRIBUTOR
Yawen Chen Reuters
PUBLISHED DEC 23, 2021

(The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are their own.)

HONG KONG (Reuters Breakingviews) - Norway's $1.4 trillion sovereign wealth fund has dumped a tiny stake in $19 billion Yunnan Baiyao, one of China’s top pharmaceutical companies specializing in so-called traditional Chinese medicine, or TCM, on grounds that the company uses pangolins, a species devastated by Chinese demand for its scales. Norway’s Council on Ethics, which makes investment recommendations to the pension fund, said it found Yunnan Baiyao’s use of pangolin unacceptable.

The TCM market, worth an estimated $150 billion, exploded during the pandemic as Beijing endorsed its claims of efficacy treating Covid-19. Global fund managers like Vanguard and BlackRock have exposure to the sector; shareholders in Hong Kong-listed China Traditional Chinese Medicine Holdings include the California Public Employees Retirement System and Quebec’s provincial pension fund, per Refinitiv data.

China has been tightening wild animal protection rules, but controversial animal practices persist. Western pressure might not deter ordinary Chinese people from believing rhinoceros horn is an aphrodisiac, or that pangolin scales treat arthritis, despite little scientific evidence. But a concerted global ESG campaign might convince Beijing, at least, to push for more reform. (By Yawen Chen)

UK car production sees ‘worst November performance since 1984’

ISOBEL FRODSHAM, PA

23 December 2021, 


UK car production saw the worst November performance since 1984 last month despite a surge in demand for battery electric vehicles.

The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) said November UK car production was the fifth consecutive month of decline, dropping 28.7% to 75,756 units, the worst figure seen in 37 years, as car makers continue to battle with a worldwide shortage of semiconductors.

It added the figure was also reflective of the closure of a car factory in the summer, which will impact year-on-year comparisons until next July.

Production for domestic vehicles declined 18.8% last month, while the figure for the overseas market fell by 30.4%.

But British production of battery electric, plug-in hybrid and hybrid cars took a record share, accounting for around a third of all cars made in November and more than a quarter over the year to date.

Battery electric vehicle output, in particular, was up in November by 52.9% to 10,359 units, hitting a new high of 13.7% of all production, more than double the level a year ago.

In the year to date, UK car plants have produced 797,261 units, some 432,794 fewer compared to 2019 and 667,441 off the five-year pre-Covid average.

Mike Hawes, SMMT chief executive, said, “These are incredibly worrying figures, underscoring the severity of the situation facing the automotive industry.

“Covid is impacting supply chains massively, causing global shortages – especially of semiconductors – which is likely to affect the sector throughout next year.

“With an increasingly negative economic backdrop, rising inflation and Covid resurgence home and abroad, the circumstances are the toughest in decades.

“With output massively down for the past five months and likely to continue, maintaining cashflow, especially in the supply chain, is of vital importance. We have to look to the Government to provide support measures in the same way it is recognising other Covid-impacted sectors.

“The industry is as well prepared as it can be for the implementation of full customs controls at UK borders from January 1 but any delays arising from ill-prepared freight or systems will place further stress on businesses that operate ‘just in time’. Should any problems arise, contingency measures must be implemented immediately to keep cross-border trade flowing smoothly.”

Tencent to offload US$16 billion stake in No 2 e-commerce player JD.com as China’s antitrust pressure mounts


The market value of JD.com shares to be transferred is estimated at US$16 billion, according to a Tencent statement issued on Tuesday

Tencent is under pressure to be a neutral infrastructure service provider amid Beijing’s push for interconnectivity, forcing it to open its ecosystem to JD.com’s rivals


Iris Dengand Jane Zhang
23 Dec, 2021

Tencent headquarters in Shenzhen, China. The company is divesting its investment in JD.com under antitrust pressure from Beijing. Photo: Bloomberg

Tencent Holdings said it would distribute most of its shares in JD.com as a special dividend to investors, as China’s dominant social media network made a surprise move to pare back its stake in the country’s second-largest e-commerce platform in response to Beijing’s antitrust demands.

The market value of JD.com shares to be transferred is estimated at HK$127.7 billion (US$16.37 billion), according to a Tencent statement issued on Thursday. Shenzhen-based Tencent, previously the biggest shareholder in JD.com, will see its stake in the company fall to 2.3 per cent from 17 per cent after the transfer.

Tencent president Martin Lau Chi-Ping has stepped down from JD.com’s board, effective immediately.

Tencent said in the statement that its strategy was to “exit the investments [where appropriate] as the investees become consistently capable of self-financing their future initiatives,” adding that JD.com has now reached that position.

Tencent is looking for return on its investments as its portfolio gets bigger, and JD.com was one of the self-sufficient companies that the internet giant has helped grow, according to a company source who declined to be named.

The divestment will not affect its strategic collaboration with JD.com in areas such as online payments and advertising, and Tencent has no similar plan for its other investee companies, the person said.

Tencent ramps up legal battle against ByteDance over popular anime
22 Dec 2021


The sale will leave JD.com founder Richard Liu Qiangdong and Walmart as the e-commerce company’s biggest shareholders, with 13.9 per cent and 9.3 per cent stakes, respectively, based on its latest annual report.

“Divesting the bulk of its interest in JD could be interpreted as a move to enable greater and fairer competition among e-commerce platforms on WeChat, rather than the previous situation that gave Tencent investees favourable treatment vs. Alibaba’s services,” said Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Matthew Kanterman.

Tencent first invested in JD.com in 2014, after it decided to retreat from a head-on battle with China’s No 1 e-commerce player Alibaba Group Holding, owner of the South China Morning Post.

At the time, Tencent acquired a 15 per cent stake in JD.com, which took over the operations of its own e-commerce platforms QQ Wanggou and PaiPai.

Their ties grew closer as competition with Alibaba intensified, prompting Tencent to raise its stake in JD.com in 2019 and 2020.

A man stands outside JD.com’s headquarters in Beijing, China, November 9, 2021. 

Photo: Reuters

In turn, JD.com’s alliance with Tencent gave it access to WeChat, China’s dominant super app where users chat, work and shop.

However, Tencent is coming under pressure to be neutral as an infrastructure service provider amid Beijing’s push for interconnectivity, forcing the company to open its ecosystem to JD.com rivals like Alibaba, according to Shawn Yang, Shenzhen-based managing director of Blue Lotus Capital Advisors.

Yang said Tencent’s divestment would not have a negative impact on JD.com in the long run as it has “moved past the stage of relying heavily on Tencent for traffic and investment”.

The Chinese government is on a mission to tear down the “walled gardens” that have long separated the online sphere into exclusive ecosystems controlled by the likes of Tencent and Alibaba. Last month Tencent announced that WeChat users will be able to directly open third-party shopping links within the platform’s group chats.

Alibaba doubles stake in tour agency as investment pace slows
9 Dec 2021


Beijing’s push for interoperability is part of the country’s antitrust crackdown on the tech sector, in which it has stepped up scrutiny of anticompetitive practices and merger and acquisition deals by major companies.

Tencent became a target of the campaign when the State Administration for Market Regulation nixed the merger of Douyu and Huya, two video game live-streaming websites Tencent controls, and slapped multiple fines on the company for failing to disclose merger and acquisition deals to the authorities.

Tencent’s divestment “is just a preliminary action of reducing their market share of different companies just like the other big tech giants in the market, as the central government would like the big companies to lower their participation in different sectors,” said Gary Ching, vice-president of research at Guosen Securities (HK).

Ching expects other Big Tech companies, such as Alibaba and Baidu, will follow suit to appease regulators.

On Thursday morning, Tencent’s Hong Kong-listed shares rallied 4.3 per cent to HK$462.20, their biggest gain since October 7, while JD.com lost 7.5 per cent. Some other Tencent investee companies also saw their shares drop, with Meituan down 3.7 per cent and Bilibili off 6 per cent.

Linus Yip, chief strategist at First Shanghai Securities in Hong Kong, said investors are worried that Tencent may also divest its holdings in these companies, triggering a sell-off in their stocks.

“The JD divestment as a dividend helps ease concerns that a dividend from its own pocket will affect growth of the company, while the company is seen to be confident of its overseas gaming business, and metaverse related business will benefit it,” said Yip.


Additional reporting by Cheryl Heng and Iris Ouyang

U.S. weapons exports down 21% to US$ 138 bil. in 2021

Updated: 2021-12-23 

Weapons exports by the U.S. fell by 21 percent this year.
The U.S. State Department said on Wednesday that gross sales of U.S. navy tools for the 2021 fiscal year came to 1-hundred-38 billion U.S. dollars.
Reuters reported that this is likely because the Biden administration is shifting away from a number of the extra arms sales practices taken by Donald Trump.
President Biden has been moving towards a new weapons export policy that emphasizes human rights in evaluating an arms sale.

Reporter : smkim@arirang.com

Migrant Deaths At An All-Time High Along The Southwest Border



By Newsy Staff
December 21, 2021

Death records from the Yuma County medical examiner show migrant deaths have already more than doubled in 2021 compared to 2020.

The Remain in Mexico policy is back in full swing after a pause. 

 Advocates who fought against the revival of the policy say they're worried it could lead to more deaths as migrants grow desperate and take greater risks to cross into the U.S. illegally.

In the Sonoran Desert, a group named Capellanes Del Desierto went on a mission to locate the body of a man who they were told died on his journey north.

Angel Mendoza Pablo believes it could be his brother Santos — a thought that torments his family back home in Guatemala where Santos left behind a wife and five kids.

Death records obtained by Newsy from the Yuma County Medical Examiner show migrant deaths have already more than doubled in 2021 compared to 2020, jumping from 16 to 34. Across the entire southwest border, the U.S. Border patrol reportedly tracked 557 migrant deaths from October 2020 through September of this year - a historic high.

Professor Brad Jones at the University of California at Davis researches migrant deaths.

"It's a killing field," Jones said. "If we were to put a cross out for every migrant who has died in some of these areas, there are places where we would literally be tripping over them."

Pima County Chief Medical Examiner Greg Hess says the border patrol numbers – high as they are – are an undercount compared to what his office sees. Deaths in his sector are more than six times higher than Yuma County. "It's been very hot in southern Arizona in 2020 and 2021, so all of that plays into potential reasons why the number of remains recovered in the last two years has increased in comparison to the previous five or six years," Hess said.

The bodies of unidentified migrants are currently stored at the Pima County morgue, where hundreds of people are reduced to serial numbers on boxes stored in a trailer.

"There's about 500 remains here because we have multiple people in in an individual box," Hess said.

DNA samples are extracted in hopes to identify the person and reunite them with family in their home country.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection's air and marine operations patrol along the border on flights to get a bird's eye view of the migrants' challenges.

Air and marine operations in Tucson reported 63 rescues in 2021.

Down on the ground, the latest numbers released by the Border Patrol show that agents in the Tucson and Yuma County sector responded to more than 650 rescues this year.

Back in the Sonoran desert – where some 20 volunteers set out looking for the remains of Santos – there was no closure for the searchers or for his brother, Angel.

The nonprofit lead seven searches for Santos over the weekend and found a body they say fits Santos' description, but they will have to wait for a DNA test, which could take at least a month for results.

Farmworkers Face Food Insecurity While Helping Feed Others

By Sam Eaton
December 22, 2021

Mano a Mano - a nonprofit family center - has become a lifeline for many of central Oregon's agricultural workers.

More than two million farms scattered across the United States provide produce, dairy and meat that end up on our dinner plates, but the people working long hours in the fields to harvest it all are struggling to feed their own families.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture defines food insecurity as a lack of consistent access to enough food for an active, healthy life. In 2020 nearly 14 million households in the U.S. - around 10.5% - were food insecure, according to the USDA's most recent report, and among those are farmworkers.

Since the beginning of the pandemic more than half of the farmworkers in Washington state have faced challenges accessing food according to recent research by the University of Washington. Another study shows 45% of Latino farmworkers in California's central valley reported food insecurity in 2020.

Ana Peña with the nonprofit Mano a Mano Family Center, says the problem is just as bad in central Oregon.

Peña is a community health worker for Mano a Mano, which means hand in hand. She says the center's food bank has become a lifeline for many of central Oregon's agricultural workers.

"Especially during summer, we'll have maseca coming in, and maseca is awesome for our tortillas, tamales, all those goodies," Peña said.

Providing traditional foods for Latino farmworkers is one thing, but Peña says for many of her clients who live and work in remote rural areas without access to transportation, just getting to the food bank is a challenge. So the food bank goes to them.

A recent tri-state COVID-19 farmworker study revealed that fewer than a quarter of farmworkers in Washington state were able to access food banks because of their limited operations and overlap with work hours.

"They also earn an incredibly low wage where even though they're harvesting the food we all eat they can't afford those same foods themselves," Peña said. "So we're making sure that they have the same opportunities as other folks to have enough food for themselves and their families."

Because of shutdowns from this winter's flooding and the seasonal nature of farm work, many of the agricultural workers in this complex can’t find work right now.

Cristina Carrio is from Guatemala. She says she works seasonally on berry farms, and she's waiting for the season to start up again.

Carrio says it's been difficult to keep her three children fed and the electric and gas bills paid. Mano a Mano food boxes mean she’ll be able to make traditional posole and tamales for Christmas.

The farmworkers are essential workers, but long hours, remote locations and low pay make the group especially vulnerable to food insecurity.

The hunger farmworkers experience may be even worse than the numbers suggest. Oregon State University sociology professor Mark Edwards has researched food insecurity in the western U.S. for two decades. He says most official data on farmworker food insecurity comes from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, which presents its own set of challenges.

"So a federal survey is conducted, and you can imagine that farm workers are, as a group, not going to trust this group, especially if they are here without documents and they're living busy lives, not necessarily in places that are easy to find by surveyors," Edwards said. "And so, they are underrepresented in the surveys, I'm sure, so we don't have excellent data that describes this."

Edwards says the best data often come from nonprofit organizations like Mano a Mano.

"The people who are out serving among these workers and asking questions and telling the story of what it is that they are experiencing," Edwards said.

With each box delivery, Peña and her team learn more about the challenges farmworkers are facing. One man says he isn't able to work because of leukemia. Another is hoping to hear soon about a winter job at a mill. For all of them, these food boxes will mean the difference between skipping meals and eating well.

"People are struggling and especially now during this pandemic, and it's made a lot of people become homeless," Peña said. "A lot of people are having to ask for a food box for the first time in their lives after working like 20, 40 years."

Pride is a huge barrier. Peña says farmworkers are used to working for the food they provide for their families, and because of their mixed legal status or their fear of jeopardizing their path to citizenship, few apply for government food stamps. This means for many farmworker nonprofits like Mano a Mano are their only safety net.

"For us, farm workers have the utmost respect from our organization because, you know, we're just giving back to them what they give to us," Peña said.

Peña says the pandemic has taught everyone how essential these workers are. She just hopes that lesson will translate into real change - safer work conditions, fair pay and not letting farmworkers go hungry while working to keep food on everyone else's plates.