Hyundai Motor plants in extra weekend run, S.Korea truckers' strike continues

Reuters/YONHAP NEWS AGENCY
By Byungwook Kim and Heekyong Yang

ULSAN, South Korea (Reuters) - A huge Hyundai Motor Co factory complex added weekend production on Saturday, despite a nationwide strike by truckers that has hit ports and other South Korean industrial giants, including steelmaker POSCO.

On day five of the strike, some 100 unionised truckers, about a tenth of Friday's show of force, assembled at the main gate of the Hyundai factory in the southern city of Ulsan, protesting soaring fuel prices and demanding higher freight rates to cover costs.


© Reuters/YONHAP NEWS AGENCYFILE PHOTO: 

Members of the Cargo Truckers Solidarity union take part in a protest in front of Kia Motor's factory tin Gwangju

About 800 striking union members were rallying at the gates of a nearby major petrochemical complex in Ulsan. They had cut the number of vehicles to one-tenth of normal levels on Friday, according to union officials.

South Korea is a major supplier of semiconductors, smartphones, autos, batteries and electronics goods. The strike has deepened uncertainty over global supply chains already disrupted by China's strict COVID-19 curbs and Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

The Transport Ministry said on Saturday it planned to meet with union representatives to continue talks aimed at ending the strike and called on union members to return to work immediately.

At the country's main seaport in Busan, which handles about 80% of the country's container movement, traffic was down to a third of normal levels on Friday, a government official said.

About 7,350 truckers, a third of the 22,000 members of the Cargo Truckers Solidarity union, were expected to be on strike on Saturday, the Transport Ministry said. The government estimates about 6% of the country's 420,000 truckers are unionised.

The union has contended a larger number of truck drivers were on strike and that many non-union truckers are also choosing not to work.

A Hyundai Motor union official said production at the Ulsan plants picked up slightly on Friday in some lines and the factory was operating at about 60% capacity overall, slightly higher than the 50% to 60% level in Thursday.

Hyundai declined to specify the status of its operations or delivery of finished cars.

"There are some disruptions to our production due to the truckers strike, and we hope production would be normalised as soon as possible," a Hyundai spokesperson said.

The union official said Saturday's factory run had not been anticipated because of worsening parts supply issues but the company was pushing ahead, likely to meet growing backorders.

Hyundai employees have started driving finished cars out of the factory complex and parking those that could not be delivered to customers because space inside had filled up, he said.

Outside factory gates and ports, union members were flagging down approaching vehicles driven by non-union truckers, asking them not to proceed but to cooperate with the strike. They were not blocking gates.

The union has said strikers would not prevent trucks from going through factory gates, and police were on hand.

(Reporting by Byungwook Kim in Ulsan and Heekyong Yang in Seoul; Writing by Jack Kim; Editing by William Mallard)

UK

Billions up in smoke as unusable PPE burned

The Hound
June 10, 2022

Credit: Natallia Boroda via Shutterstock

The government is being forced to burn some £4bn-worth of personal protective equipment (PPE), in what has been branded “perhaps the most shameful episode of the pandemic”.

A damning cross-party report by the Public Accounts Committee found that the Department for Health and Social Care lost 75 per cent of the £12bn it purchased on highly-inadequate and grossly-inflated PPE for frontline workers.

Of the £9bn wasted by officials, £4bn will now have to be recycled or incinerated. Dame Meg Hillier, the committee’s chair, wrote: “The costs and environmental impact of disposing of the excess and unusable PPE is unclear.”

The Labour MP said that the government’s “haphazard purchasing strategy” overwhelmed the National Health Service and “exposed weaknesses in the department’s commercial contracting capability”.

She added: “In a desperate bid to catch up the government splurged huge amounts of money, paying obscenely inflated prices and payments to middlemen in a chaotic rush during which they chucked out even the most cursory due diligence.

“This has left us with massive public contracts now under investigation by the National Crime Agency or in dispute because of allegations of modern slavery in the supply chain.”

Her report comes after the High Court ruled that the “high priority lane” to help “VIPs” win lucrative procurement contracts for PPE were unlawful.

Pat Cullen, chief executive of the Royal College of Nursing, described the findings as “galling”, while Labour’s deputy leader Angela Rayner said the episode represents “the shameful and toxic waste of Boris Johnson’s Conservatives”.

The official inquiry into the government’s performance during lockdown has not even started, but the government’s shortfalls are already floating to the surface.

Virginia Thomas and Trump’s election coup: More revelations about role of Supreme Court justice’s wife

Jacob Crosse
WSWS.ORG


A day after the January 6 House Select Committee held the first of a series of nationally televised hearings, the Washington Post reported on the discovery of dozens more emails between Virginia Thomas and 29 Republican state lawmakers from Arizona in which she advanced Trump’s scheme to replace duly elected electors with fraudulent pro-Trump substitutes.

Last month it was revealed that Thomas, the wife of arch-reactionary Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, had sent emails to the Arizona Speaker of the House Rusty Bowers and state Representative Shawnna Bolick, demanding that they reject the popular vote and “take action to ensure [a] clean slate of electors are chosen.”

Spreading Trump’s fascistic claims that the 2020 election was fraudulent and Biden was illegitimate as president, Thomas called on the Arizona Republicans to overturn Biden’s victory in the state, which he carried by more than 10,000 votes. She urged them to install a slate of pro-Trump electors instead of the Biden electors, who had actually been chosen by the voters.

On Friday the Post confirmed that Thomas sent the same email to more than half of the Republicans in the Arizona state legislature, 29 different state representatives in total. The first messages were all sent on November 9, 2020, two days after Biden was declared the winner of the 2020 election. In the messages, she called on the politicians to “stand strong in the face of political and media pressure” and “fight back” against (non-existent) voter fraud.

Trump himself made a similar to appeal to over a dozen Michigan state lawmakers, who convened at the White House on November 20, 2020. Another Trump co-conspirator, Pennsylvania Rep. Scott Perry, likewise advanced efforts to have Pennsylvania’s Democratic electors rejected by the state legislature in pursuit of Trump’s coup.

One of the Republicans who responded affirmatively to Thomas’s call to overthrow the government and install Trump as president-dictator was then-state Rep. Anthony Kern. The Post noted Kern was “a Stop the Steal supporter” who “was photographed outside the Capitol” during the January 6 attack. The former state legislator, who has yet to be charged for participating in the attack, has already earned Trump’s endorsement in his 2022 primary contest, no doubt for prior services rendered.

The Post reported that Thomas, a life-long Republican operative and Trump’s henchwoman, continued to badger lawmakers via email for over a month, demanding they install pro-Trump electors. On December 13 Thomas sent another batch of emails to 22 Arizona House members and one senator. In a bald-faced lie, she told the lawmakers they had the “Constitutional power and authority” to “protect the integrity of our elections” which had “never before in our nation’s history ... been so threatened by fraud and unconstitutional procedures.”

The emails confirm that Trump’s conspiracy to overthrow the election did not begin with his December 19 call to action on Twitter, where he instigated his followers and Republican accomplices to descend on Washington D.C. and “be wild” outside the Capitol on January 6. Trump’s coup did not rest on the combat prowess of the far-right militias like the Proud Boys or Oath Keepers.

In reality, the effort to enlist state legislatures to overturn the election was planned well in advance by Republicans like Thomas and the fascist Stephen Bannon through Republican-funded think tanks like the Claremont Institute, the Bradley Foundation, Groundswell and others, in coordination with Republican politicians at the state and federal levels.

On January 6, a majority of the Republicans in Congress supported Trump’s effort to overturn the election, with 147 Republicans voting to challenge the Electoral College results even after the attack on Congress, while all but 10 Republicans in the House voted against impeaching Trump over his role in the attack.

The Republican Party as a whole continues to back Trump’s fascist lies that the election was “stolen” and that the attempted coup was “legitimate political discourse.” Following Thursday’s hearings, Trump again attacked the January 6 committee as an “unselect committee of political HACKS” and called the fascist attack on Congress as the “greatest movement” in the history of the United States.

It was a deliberate decision that during Thursday’s nationally televised hearing, neither committee chair Bennie Thompson (Democrat-Mississippi) nor vice chair Liz Cheney (Republican-Wyoming) mentioned Virginia Thomas’ role in the plot.

They sought to limit the exposure of the political crimes of January 6 to Trump’s personal role, while covering up the fact that fascism has found support both in the Republican Party and in significant sections of the Supreme Court and police-military-intelligence apparatus as well.

The scope of the ultra-right takeover of the Republican Party was underscored by the arrest Thursday morning of Michigan Republican gubernatorial candidate Ryan Kelley for his actions in connection with the failed coup.

FBI agents arrested the 40-year-old real estate agent at his home in Allendale, Michigan. Kelley was charged with four misdemeanors, including knowingly entering the US Capitol or Capitol grounds, disorderly and disruptive conduct in that space, knowingly engaging in physical violence against a person or property on the Capitol grounds and willfully injuring or attacking property of the United States. Each count carries a maximum one-year prison sentence.

Evidence cited in court documents includes video of Kelley pushing up the Capitol steps and goading others to attack, with one video showing him yelling to Trump’s foot soldiers, “Come on, let’s go! This is war, baby!”

Kelley, who has previously described January 6 as an “energizing event,” has centered his gubernatorial campaign on appealing to Trump and his fascist supporters. He has previously touted his endorsement by Michigan’s Three Percenters militia group and participated in the April 2020 storming of the Lansing state Capitol, a prelude to the January 6 attack.

Kelley was a leading Republican candidate for governor prior to his arrest, after five other Republican candidates were denied ballot status last month when the Michigan elections bureau found substantial numbers of fraudulent and duplicate signatures on their nominating petitions.

The five remaining Michigan Republican candidates for governor on the ballot for the August 2 primary are Kelley, the ultra-right media commentator Tudor Dixon, pastor Ralph Rebandt, businessman Kevin Rinke and Garrett Soldano.

Kelley’s next hearing will be held virtually next week after he was released on bond Thursday afternoon to the cheers of a small crowd of supporters who had gathered outside the federal courthouse in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Washington Post: 29 Arizona lawmakers received messages from Ginni Thomas

The message urged the lawmakers to “fight back against fraud”

Patrick Semansky/Associated Press File photo: Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, right, arrive for a State Dinner with Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison and President Donald Trump at the White House, Sept. 20, 2019, in Washington.

By CNN COM WIRE SERVICE 
PUBLISHED: June 10, 2022 
By Tierney Sneed | CNN

Virginia “Ginni” Thomas’ efforts to call on state lawmakers to disrupt President Joe Biden’s 2020 election win were broader than previously known, with The Washington Post reporting Friday that the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas had sent form letters to 29 Arizona legislators encouraging them to meddle in the state’s slate of presidential electors.

The new report adds 27 recipients of the messages to the two Arizona lawmakers who, it was reported last month, received apparently prewritten emails from Ginni Thomas.

Ginni Thomas’ support of the efforts to overturn former President Donald Trump’s electoral defeat have come under scrutiny given her husband’s participation in a case that was before the Supreme Court concerning the House’s January 6 investigation. There is the potential that he will be involved in other cases related to that investigation.

Justices decide for themselves whether cases present a conflict requiring their recusal. The Supreme Court public information office did not respond to CNN’s inquiry about the latest report.

Twenty members of the Arizona House and seven state senators received identical messages on November 9, 2020, the Post wrote.

The message urged the lawmakers to “fight back against fraud” and exercise their supposed constitutional authority to unilaterally choose a “clean” slate of presidential electors.

Another batch of letters from Thomas — aimed at 22 members of Arizona’s House and one of its state senators, according to the Post — went out on December 13, the day before representatives were set to meet at statehouses across the country to vote to certify their slates of electors. The messages asked the lawmakers that, before they chose the electors, they “consider what will happen to the nation we all love if you do not stand up and lead.”

Last month it was first revealed — in a previous report by the Post as well as in tweets by one of the lawmakers involved — that Ginni Thomas had participated in the messaging campaign to Arizona lawmakers.

One of the November form letters from Thomas went to state Rep. Shawnna Bolick, who responded to the message with a suggestion that Thomas file any complaints of fraud to the state attorney general and who posted the exchange on Twitter.

Thomas’ messages were sent via an online platform for sending prewritten messages to lawmakers called FreeRoots, the Post reported.

Justice Thomas was the only justice to publicly dissent from the Supreme Court’s move in January not to block a court order greenlighting the release of Trump White House documents to the House investigators. CNN has since reported that his wife exchanged texts with Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows in 2020 urging him to continue the fight to overturn Biden’s win. (Those texts had been turned over to the committee voluntarily by Meadows).

Ginni Thomas did not comment to the Post and didn’t immediately return a request for comment from CNN.

She has been publicly critical of the House January 6 investigation, calling on House GOP leaders to boot from their conference the two Republicans serving on the select committee. She attended the rally that preceded the attack on the Capitol, as she said in an interview with the Washington Free Beacon, where she stressed that her and her husband’s professional lives are kept separate. She said that she had left the gathering before the protesters turned violent.

March for Our Lives' Returns With Renewed Gun Control Push

June 10, 2022 
Associated Press

Workers set up for the "March for Our Lives" rally on the National Mall, near the White House, in Washington, June 10, 2022. The march is returning to Washington after four years.

WASHINGTON —

Angered by the unrelenting toll from gun violence, tens of thousands of people are expected at rallies this weekend in the nation's capital and around the United States demanding that Congress pass meaningful changes to gun laws.

The second "March for Our Lives" rally will take place Saturday in front of the Washington Monument, a successor to the 2018 march organized by student protesters after the mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida.

Now with recent shootings from Uvalde, Texas, to Buffalo, New York, bringing gun control back into the national conversation, organizers of this weekend's events say the time is right to renew their push for a national overhaul.

"Right now we are angry," said Mariah Cooley, a "March for Our Lives" board member and a senior at Washington's Howard University. "This will be a demonstration to show that us as Americans, we're not stopping anytime soon until Congress does their jobs. And if not, we'll be voting them out."

FILE - Looking west, people fill Pennsylvania Avenue during the "March for Our Lives" rally in support of gun control, March 24, 2018, in Washington.

About 50,000 participants are predicted to turn out in the District of Columbia, with rain in the forecast. That's far fewer than the original march, which filled downtown Washington with more than 200,000 people. This time, organizers are focusing on holding smaller marches at an estimated 300 locations.

"We want to make sure that this work is happening across the country," said Daud Mumin, co-chairman of the march's board of directors and a recent graduate of Westminster College in Salt Lake City. "This work is not just about D.C., it's not just about senators."

The protest comes at a time of renewed political activity on guns and a crucial moment for possible action in Congress.

Survivors of mass shootings and other incidents of gun violence have lobbied legislators and testified on Capitol Hill this week. Among them was Miah Cerrillo, 11, who survived the shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. She told lawmakers how she covered herself with a dead classmate's blood to avoid being shot.

On Tuesday, actor Matthew McConaughey appeared at the White House briefing room to press for gun legislation and made highly personal remarks about the violence in his hometown of Uvalde.

The House has passed bills that would raise the age limit to buy semiautomatic weapons and establish federal "red-flag" laws. But such initiatives have traditionally stalled or been heavily watered down in the Senate. Democratic and Republican senators had hoped to reach agreement this week on a framework for addressing the issue and talked Friday, but they had not announced an accord by early evening.

Mumin referred to the Senate as "where substantive action goes to die," and said the new march is meant to send a message to lawmakers that public opinion on gun control is shifting under their feet. "If they're not on our side, there are going to be consequences — voting them out of office and making their lives a living hell when they're in office," he said.

The "March for Our Lives" movement was born out of the massacre when 14 students and three staff members were gunned down February 14, 2018, at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School near Fort Lauderdale, Florida, by a former student. Surviving students organized bus trips to the state capital to lobby in person, and they succeeded in pressuring the Republican-dominated state government to buck the National Rifle Association's influence and pass substantial measures targeting gun violence.

Then-Governor Rick Scott, a Republican, signed legislation that banned bump stocks, raised the gun buying age to 21, imposed a three-day waiting period for purchases and authorized police to seek court orders seizing guns from people deemed threats to themselves and others.

David Hogg, third from right, Parkland school shooting survivor and co-founder of "March for Our Lives," pauses as he speaks during a rally outside Sen. Marco Rubio's Miami office calling for gun reform, June 3, 2022, in Miami.

The Parkland students then took aim at gun laws in other states and nationally, launching "March for Our Lives" and holding the big rally in Washington on March 24, 2018.

The group did not match the Florida results at the national level but has persisted in advocating for gun restrictions since then, as well as participating in voter registration drives.

One of the group's highest-profile activists, co-founder David Hogg, said in a tweet Friday that he believed "this time is different," pointing to his opinion piece on Fox News.

He wrote that his group is not "anti-gun" and supports the Second Amendment but wants measures with bipartisan support. "Let's start there and find common ground to take action, because the next shooter is already planning his attack," he said.

Cholera outbreak ‘could kill thousands’ as corpses lie uncollected in Mariupol

The collection of bodies in Mariupol has been slow. 

Photo: Reuters/Alexander Ermochenko


Max Huner
June 11 2022 

Cholera and other deadly diseases could kill thousands of people in the southern Ukrainian city of Mariupol as corpses lie uncollected and summer brings warmer weather, its mayor said yesterday.

Vadym Boichenko said wells had been contaminated by the corpses of people killed during weeks of Russian bombardment and siege, and the collection of bodies by the city’s Russian occupiers was proceeding slowly.

“There is an outbreak of dysentery and cholera. This is unfortunately the assessment of our doctors: that the war which took over 20,000 residents... unfortunately, with these infection outbreaks, will claim thousands more Mariupolites,” he said.

Mr Boichenko, who is based outside Mariupol, said the city had been placed into quarantine.

Read More
Mariupol placed under quarantine as city braces itself for a cholera outbreak

Ukraine says about 100,000 people are now in Mariupol, a once-vibrant city that had a population of about 430,000 before the war but is now an urban wasteland.

Mr Boichenko, who said last month that the Russian bombardment had turned Mariupol into a “medieval ghetto”, said residents had been forced to drink water from wells because the city had no running water or functioning sewerage system.

He urged the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross to work on establishing a humanitarian corridor to help residents to leave the city, which Ukrainian officials say still lacks centralised water, electricity and gas supplies.

The World Health Organisation warned last month of a possible cholera outbreak in Mariupol.

Britain’s defence ministry said yesterday that there was a risk of a major cholera outbreak in Mariupol because medical services were probably near collapse.

War in Ukraine: Cholera fears in Mariupol

PESTILENCE

Russia has quarantined the Ukrainian city of Mariupol after it was hit by what may be a cholera outbreak, Ukrainian authorities claimed. Water supplies are contaminated because of decomposing corpses and carbage after brutal siege. Amesh Adalja, Senior Scholar at Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security tells us more.   

Biden admin's 4th arms sales to Taiwan slammed, 'cannot pose threat to PLA, only makes island cash cow'

By GT staff reporters

Published: Jun 09, 2022 


Illustration: Liu Rui/GT

China on Thursday slammed the US' approval of a possible sale of $120 million in naval equipment to the island of Taiwan, the latest move between the US and the island amid their growing exchanges, which observers from the mainland warned could only worsen the situation in the Taiwan Straits instead of enhancing the island's combat preparedness given the huge gap between the two sides across the Taiwan Straits.

The latest arms sales cannot pose a threat to the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA), and will only make the island of Taiwan a cash cow of the US, experts said.

China urged the US to abide by the one-China principle and the three China-US joint communiqués and cancel the arms sales to Taiwan and stop their military ties, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said during a routine press conference on Thursday. He said that China will continue to take firm and forceful measures to firmly safeguard its sovereignty and security interests.

Ma Xiaoguang, spokesperson for the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council, on the same day also refuted the sales, urging the US to stop playing with fire over the Taiwan question.

Zhao and Ma's remarks came after Taiwan's defense authority on Thursday announced the $120 million arms sale for "naval ship spare parts and related technical support." The department said that the sale is meant to help Taiwan keep its naval vessels properly equipped and replenished, and that the deal is expected to take effect next month.

This arms sale could contain a big category, which includes not only the replacement of hardware, but also the calibration of the relevant system and the training of personnel, Chinese mainland military expert and TV commentator Song Zhongping told the Global Times on Thursday.

The US will rake in enormous profits from the so-called maintenance, he said, noting that the island of Taiwan has purchased from the US second-hand military equipment whose performance was not good and whose maintenance cost will be very high.

Many of Taiwan's ships are old, and the main purpose of maintenance is to prolong their life, and there is no way to enhance their combat effectiveness, said Song. This means even after maintenance, they cannot pose a serious threat to the PLA, the expert pointed out.

It was reportedly the third arms sales by the US to the island this year as well as the fourth conducted by the Biden administration.

Given that the US has passed numerous bills, including the Taiwan Assurance Act, which calls for regular arms sales to Taiwan, this also shows that US arms sales to Taiwan region have been normalized, Song said.

As the situation across the Taiwan Straits continues to be tense, "Taiwan independence" forces and foreign forces are continuing their provocations, and regular arms sales can only create more uncertainty across the Straits, increasing the risk of a military conflict, Song warned.

US arms sales to the island of Taiwan are essentially used as the "Taiwan card" to contain the Chinese mainland, showing the US support to the separatist Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) authority in the island and aggravating tensions across the Taiwan Straits, which is a step of the US' "Indo-Pacific Strategy." Also, the US can cash in on the island through arms sales, and make the regional authority more dependent on it, Zhang Junshe, a senior research fellow at the Naval Research Academy of the PLA, told the Global Times on Thursday.

Zhang condemned the US, saying the country has claimed it adhered to the one-China policy but in fact has shown support for the separatist DPP in the island.

However, the gap in military strength between the island of Taiwan and the Chinese mainland is great, experts said, noting that US attempts to use the island to suppress the mainland by arming it is delusional.

Even if the sale was approved, how well it would progress is still in question, analysts said.

In May, the Taiwan defense authority announced that the first deal approved by the Biden administration in 2021 to sell $750 million worth of arms to Taiwan, including 40 155mm M109A6 medium self-propelled howitzers, had been halted by the US.

According to Taiwan news outlet udn.com, the pause in the howitzer sale means a complete cancelation, and the budget will be returned.

The latest arms sales plan came after the recent visit of US Senator Tammy Duckworth to the island, in which the island's regional leader Tsai Ing-wen said that a cooperation plan between the US National Guard and Taiwan's armed forces was in the works.

Around the time Duckworth left the Taiwan island, the PLA Eastern Theater Command on June 1 announced the third large-scale military exercise around the Taiwan in the past 30 days targeting the recent frequent US-Taiwan collusion.

Previously, a joint exercise surrounding the island of Taiwan from its east and southwest was announced on May 9, and a joint alert patrol plus a realistic combat drill in and above the waters around the island was announced on May 25.

The drills not only served as warnings to Taiwan secessionists and foreign interference forces, but also practically enhanced the PLA's capabilities in a potential reunification-by-force operation, analysts said.

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for PERMANENT ARMS ECONOMY 

Lightyear 0 is World’s First Solar Car, Deliveries Set to Begin as Soon as November

JUNE 10, 2022  

After many years of design and testing, the Lightyear 0 is finally going into production this fall as the world’s first solar car. In optimal conditions, the vehicle is capable of freely traveling for up to seven months without having to be plugged into a household outlet or charging station.

Unlike standard EVs, the Lightyear 0 boasts five square meters of patented, double curved solar arrays, which enable the vehicle to charge itself while commuting or just parked outdoors. This means that it can power itself with 70 kilometers of range per day on top of its estimated 625 kilometers WLTP range. Power comes from a four electric motors that draw on a 60kWh battery pack generating 174 hp and 1,269 lb-ft of torque, or enough to hit 62mph in 10 seconds, while topping out at 100mph. Inside, you’ll find seats covered in plant-based leather, fabric accents made from recycled bottles, rattan palm wood trim, and a 10.1-inch center touchscreen running on Android Automotive. Production will be limited to 946 units worldwide, priced from €250,000. The closest competitor would be the Aptera 1,000-mile solar vehicle.

Today is the day we’ve all been waiting for since us five co-founders sat in a kitchen sketching out our dream of building the most sustainable car on the planet. In 2016, we only had an idea; three years later, we had a prototype. Now, after six years of testing, iterating, (re)designing, and countless obstacles, Lightyear 0 is proof that the impossible is actually possible,” said Lex Hoefsloot, Lightyear’s Co-Founder and CEO.

Prince Charles ‘appalled’ over UK’s offshore detention deal

London: Prince Charles privately labelled the British government’s plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda as “appalling”, The Times has reported, in a revelation that threatens to overshadow his appearance at a Commonwealth summit in the central African nation later this month.

The future king, who will represent the Queen at the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, was said have criticised Boris Johnson’s refugee policy several times in private, while also expressing concerns it could be problematic ahead of the summit on June 23.

Prince Charles, seen here with Commonwealth Secretary General Patricia Scotland on June 9, 2022, will represent the Queen at the Commonwealth Heads of Government summit in Rwanda later this month. Credit:Getty

Under new laws, migrants who arrive in Britain illegally face being deported to Rwanda under a deal struck by the government in April. The policy is loosely modelled on Australia’s offshore processing system for asylum seekers who arrive by boat, implement by successive governments almost a decade ago. While arrivals may claim asylum once they arrive in the UK under British laws, the new plan will send them to the central African nation while their claims are processed.

An initial legal challenge to the policy failed on Friday after a High Court judge ruled that the first flight - due to deport migrants on Tuesday - could go ahead.

The newspaper quoted a source saying Charles, 73, had said on numerous occasions he was “more than disappointed at the policy”.

“He said he thinks the government’s whole approach is appalling. It was clear he was not impressed with the government’s direction of travel,” the source said.

Clarence House had not denied that Charles was opposed to the policy but insisted that he had not tried to influence the government.

A spokesman told The Times: “We would not comment on supposed anonymous private conversations with the Prince of Wales, except to restate that he remains politically neutral. Matters of policy are decisions for government.“

Charles will likely be deeply embarrassed by the fact that his views on the policy of sending migrants to had been made public, not least because he will meet with Rwandan president Paul Kagame who signed off on the agreement.

Under the deal, Rwanda will be paid an initial £120 million ($209 million) to receive migrants who arrive illegally in the UK. The full details of the agreement have not been made publicly available.

The British government views the policy as crucial in deterring Channel crossings. More than 10,000 migrants have crossed this year, a figure that was not reached until August last year.

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The Commonwealth meeting is the first since Charles was named as the next head of the group in 2018. He and his wife, Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall, will become the first members of the royal family to visit Rwanda and will use their three-day tour to see a church where 10,000 Tutsis were massacred during the country’s genocide in 1994.

Charles has spoken out on a wide range of issues over the decades, particularly on the environment and climate.

In a reference to Russia’s annexation of Crimea in March 2014, he said: Charles said: “And now Putin is doing just about the same as Hitler.”

His remarks created a furore with the Russian president saying the comparison of him to Hitler was “unacceptable” and “wrong”, adding: “This is not what monarchs do.”

In 2005, he successfully sued a British newspaper after it published an extract from his private journals — written in 1997 when he attended the handover of Hong Kong to China — in which he called Chinese leaders “appalling old waxworks”.

A strong supporter of Tibet and its exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, he continued to express antipathy to the Beijing regime, boycotting banquets involving the Chinese in 1999 and 2005. He has more recently he has adopted a diplomatic stance towards China.

In a BBC documentary marking his 70th birthday in 2018, he said he would no longer make public interventions on such subjects once he was king, declaring: “I’m not that stupid.”

He told the program he would not be “able to do the same things I’ve done as heir” and as monarch would have to operate within “constitutional parameters”.

As Head of State, the Queen has to remain strictly neutral regarding political matters. By convention, she does not vote but does have ceremonial and formal roles relating to the government of the United Kingdom.

The Rwanda offshore detention issue is one of the most politically sensitive debates in the United Kingdom. A High Court challenge of the new policy was defeated last week. Credit:AP

Vernon Bogdanor, professor of government at King’s College, London, told the paper that the prince was in a different position from the Queen and while criticising a policy position in private was not problematic he must not do or say anything involving party politics.

“The only constraint is that he must not say anything which would embarrass the Queen,” he told The Times.

LED COUP AGAINST EVO MORALES

Former Bolivian president sentenced to 10 years in prison

Former Bolivian interim President Jeanine Áñez has been sentenced to 10 years in prison on charges linked to her assumption of office in 2019 amid violent protests that led to the resignation and exile of her predecessor, Evo Morales

ByCarlos Valdez Associated Press

June 10, 2022, 

FILE - Standing behind bars, Bolivia's former interim President Jeanine Anez speaks to an unidentified woman at a police station jailhouse, in La Paz, Bolivia, on March 13, 2021. Prosecutors have asked on Monday, June 6, 2022, for a sentence of 15 years of prison against Anez. (AP Photo/Juan Karita, File)

The Associated Press

LA PAZ, Bolivia -- Former Bolivian interim President Jeanine Áñez was sentenced to 10 years in prison Friday on charges linked to her assumption of office in 2019 amid violent protests that led to the resignation and exile of her predecessor, Evo Morales.

Áñez was convicted by the court of dereliction of duty and acting against the constitution when she proclaimed herself president in what Morales and his party have called a coup.

Áñez’s supporters deny it was a coup, saying Morales' alleged abuse of power triggered a legitimate uprising in the streets. The ouster of Bolivia's first Indigenous president and his vice president created a power vacuum that allowed Áñez to assume the interim presidency as second president of the Senate, they claim. The defense said she will appeal the decision.

“I did not lift a finger to become president, but I did what I had to do to pacify a country that Morales left convulsed as he fled,” Áñez said from the prison where she is being held.

Morales stepped down following nationwide protests over suspected vote-rigging in an Oct. 20 election, which he claimed to have won to gain a fourth term in office. Morales has denied there was fraud. The protests left 37 dead and forced Morales to take refuge in Mexico.

His party, known by its initials in Spanish MAS, returned to power in 2020 elections and Morales has since returned to Bolivia.

The trial sets a “historic precedent” against impunity, said MAS deputy Juan José Jáuregui.

The court also sentenced former Armed Forces commander Williams Kaliman and ex-police commander Vladimir Calderon to 10 years in prison. Four other former military chiefs received lesser sentences.

Outside the prison where she was being held about 50 people held posters protesting Áñez.

Written warning on every cigarette in Canadian world-first

‘Poison in every puff’ message proposed amid government concern photo warnings on tobacco packages have lost impact

The Canadian government expects health warnings on each cigarette to be introduced in the latter half of next year. Photograph: Jonathan Brady/PA

Associated Press in Toronto
Sat 11 Jun 2022 03.25 BST

Canada is poised to become the first country in the world to require that a warning be printed on every cigarette.

The move builds on Canada’s mandate to include graphic photo warnings on tobacco products’ packaging, a policy that started an international trend when it was introduced two decades ago.

“We need to address the concern that these messages may have lost their novelty, and to an extent we worry that they may have lost their impact as well,” the minister of mental health and addictions, Carolyn Bennett, said at a news conference on Friday.


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“Adding health warnings on individual tobacco products will help ensure that these essential messages reach people including the youth, who often access cigarettes one at a time in social situations, sidestepping the information printed on a package.”
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A consultation period for the proposed change was set to begin on Saturday, and the government anticipated the changes coming into force in the latter half of 2023.

While the exact messaging printed on cigarettes could change, Bennett said the current proposal is: “Poison in every puff.”

Bennett also revealed expanded warnings for cigarette packages that include a longer list of smoking’s health effects, including stomach cancer, colorectal cancer, diabetes and peripheral vascular disease.

Canada has required the photo warnings since the turn of the millennium, but the images haven’t been updated in a decade.

Rob Cunningham, a senior policy analyst with the Canadian Cancer Society, said he hoped the warnings printed directly on cigarettes became popular internationally, just as the package warnings did.

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“This is going to set a world precedent,” he said, adding no other country had implemented such regulations. He was hopeful the warning would make a real difference.

“It’s a warning that you simply cannot ignore,” Cunningham said. “It’s going to reach every smoker, with every puff.”

The move also drew praise from Geoffrey Fong, a professor at the University of Waterloo and principal investigator with the International Tobacco Control Policy Evaluation Project.

“This is a really potentially powerful intervention that’s going to enhance the impact of health warnings,” Fong said.

Smoking rates have been steadily falling over the years. The latest data from Statistics Canada, released last month, shows 10% of Canadians reported smoking regularly. The government is seeking to cut that rate in half by 2035.

StatCan noted that roughly 11% Canadians 20 and older reported being current smokers, compared to just 4% of people aged 15 to 19.