Saturday, February 27, 2021

WHO COMPLAIN ABOUT $15 MINIMUM WAGE
AMC Entertainment approves millions in bonuses to top executives


(Reuters) - AMC Entertainment Holdings has approved millions in bonuses to its top executives and eligible employees as a means to preserve stockholder value during the COVID-19 pandemic, the theater operator said.

In a regulatory filing on Friday, the company said Chief Executive Officer Adam Aron would receive $3.75 million as bonus, while other top executives are entitled to bonuses of $173,000 to $507,000.

The move comes at a time when cinema chains like AMC have taken a blow due to coronavirus-led restrictions that caused delays in film releases. The company staved off bankruptcy through a debt restructuring deal last year.

Shares of the Leawood, Kansas-based company were also one of the “stonks” whose wild ride captivated investors several weeks ago and during which its share price surged more than 860% compared with the beginning of the year, at its highest.

AMC’s shares closed down 3.4% at $8.01 on Friday.


Reporting by Eva Mathews in Bengaluru; Editing by Maju Samuel

White House restores key climate measure calculating carbon's harm


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House on Friday announced a major change in how the federal government will calculate and weigh the cost of climate change in its permitting, investment and regulatory decisions with a move to restore the “social cost of greenhouse gases,” which had been slashed under the Trump administration.

Heather Boushey, a member of the Council of Economic Advisers said that the Biden administration will restore price estimates made before 2017 of about $50 per ton of greenhouse gases emitted from $10 or less per ton used by the Trump administration.

“This interim step will enable federal agencies to immediately and more appropriately account for climate impacts in their decision-making while we continue the process of bringing the best, most up-to-date science and economics to the estimation of the social costs of greenhouse gases,” Boushey wrote in a White House blog.

The Bush administration first implemented the “social cost of greenhouse gases” and the practice was standardized under former President Barack Obama.

It has been used in rule-making processes and permitting decisions to estimate the economic damages associated with a rise in greenhouse gas emissions in areas ranging from agricultural productivity and property damage from increased flood risk.

The Obama administration had created an Interagency Working Group of technical experts across the government to develop uniform estimates, subject to public comment. The group will work to develop a new estimate in months.

Richard Revesz, a professor at New York University School of Law, said restoring the previous calculation should provide a blueprint to calculate a new one that incorporates the latest” developments in science and economics”.

Economists Nicholas Stern and Joseph Stiglitz this week said that the Working Group should not “settle on anything much below $100 per ton by 2030 for the social cost of carbon” when it replaces the interim number to be able to achieve the goals of the Paris agreement, limiting the rise of global temperatures to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Reporting by Valerie Volcovici



Attack of the Murder Hornets is a nature doc shot through horror/sci-fi lens | Ars Technica

Director Michael Paul Stephenson brings his unique sensibility to documentary genre.


JENNIFER OUELLETTE - 2/23/2021, 1:59 PM

Enlarge / "What are you looking at?" The Asian Giant Hornet, aka a "murder hornet," is not to be trifled with.

Gary Alpert

In November 2019, a beekeeper in Blaine, Washington, named Ted McFall was horrified to discover thousands of tiny mutilated bodies littering the ground—an entire colony of his honeybees had been brutally decapitated. The culprit: the Asian giant hornet (Vespa mandarinia), a species native to southeast Asia and parts of the Russian far East. Somehow, these so-called "murder hornets" had found their way to the Pacific Northwest, where they were posing a dire ecological threat to North American honeybee populations.

The story of the quest to track and eradicate the hornets before their numbers became overwhelming is the subject of a new documentary: Attack of the Murder Hornets, now streaming on Discovery+. Featuring genuine suspense, a colorful cast of characters crossing socioeconomic lines, and a tone that draws on classic horror and science fiction movies, it's one of the best nature documentaries you're likely to see this year.

Asian giant hornets are what's known as apex predators, sporting enormous mandibles that they use to rip the heads off their prey and remove the tasty thoraxes (which include muscles that power the bee's wings for flying and movement). A single hornet can decapitate 20 bees in one minute, and just a handful can wipe out 30,000 bees in 90 minutes. The hornet has a venomous, extremely painful sting—and its stinger is long enough to puncture traditional beekeeping suits. Conrad Berube, a beekeeper and entomologist who had the misfortune to be stung seven times while exterminating a murder hornet nest, told The New York Times, "It was like having red-hot thumbtacks being driven into my flesh." And while Japanese honeybees, for example, have evolved defenses against the murder hornet, North American honeybees have not, as the slaughter of McFall's colony aptly demonstrated.

Director Michael Paul Stephenson's credits include two documentaries: Best Worst Movie—about his experience co-starring in the 1990 cult comedy/horror film Troll 2—and The American Scream. So when he pitched his idea for a documentary about the murder hornets to Discovery, some of that horror sensibility crept in, including B-movie-inspired artwork showing a gigantic hornet menacing beekeepers and scientists.

"I've watched a lot of documentaries, and a lot of them, it's interview, B-roll, interview, B-roll, political statement, theme," he told Ars. Stephenson wanted to do something different and shoot his murder hornet documentary through a horror/sci-fi lens.


Enlarge / Attack of the Murder Hornets is a nature documentary viewed through the lens of science fiction and horror. 
Discovery Plus

Among those featured in Attack of the Murder Hornets: Chris Looney, an entomologist with the Washington State Department of Agriculture (WSDA); McFall and fellow beekeeper Ruthie Danielson; a government scientist and insect expert named Sven-Erik Spichiger; and Berube, who was the first to find and destroy a murder hornet nest in Vancouver Island, Canada. Stephenson's team chronicled the race against the breeding clock to find and destroy a similar hornet nest in Washington state.

CLICK ON TITLE TO GO TO INTERVIEW WITH PAUL STEPHENSON
LONG READ.

Friday, February 26, 2021

Garden-variety germs may explode in COVID’s wake, study suggests

In coronavirus's wake, garden-variety germs may come roaring back.


BETH MOLE - 2/23/2021 ARS TECHNICA

Young children go back to kindergarten following COVID-19 lockdown.

In our cushy COVID bubbles, our immune systems may be getting soft.

Physical distancing, lockdowns, masking, and spirited sanitizing all mean we are coming into contact with fewer garden-variety germs than normal. This year’s flu season was basically cancelled.

While that may seem like a welcome reprieve from seasonal ailments and pesky sniffles, experts fear that our immune systems may be losing their defensive edge in the lull. And with the usual microscopic suspects lying in wait for our return to some sense of normalcy, it could mean that nasty bursts of common colds and flu-like illnesses are in our post-COVID futures—ones that may not be avoidable even if we carry on with some of our COVID precautions.

That seems to be what played out in Hong Kong. In an analysis published in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases, researchers noted a dramatic burst of upper respiratory infections there shortly after children returned to schools and daycares in October 2020. The outbreaks erupted even though teachers and students were still following strict COVID precautions.

“Staff and students wore face masks at all times; lunch hours were cancelled, desks were spaced out, and group activities were limited,” the researchers noted.

Still, by the end of November, the researchers tallied 482 outbreaks of upper respiratory infections in schools. Of the outbreaks, 308 were in primary schools and 149 were in kindergartens, childcare centers, and nursery schools. The remaining 25 were in secondary schools. With the widespread outbreaks, officials began calling for territory-wide school closures in mid to late November.

When researchers looked at laboratory testing on the specific germs behind the snotty surge, they found no infections from the novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, and no infections with influenza viruses. Instead, the testing pointed to rhinoviruses and enteroviruses—culprits of the common cold and other similarly mild infections.

Roaring back


The researchers hypothesize that the burst of bothersome bugs was born out of immune responses in the children waning while in-person learning was largely shut down between January and late September. A cross-sectional survey had earlier suggested that 75 percent of school children did not have contact with people outside their households while they were out of school.

As cases of colds and flu-like illnesses plummeted during that time, “population susceptibility to rhinoviruses and other respiratory viruses, including influenza viruses, might have been increasing over time because persons were likely less exposed to the viruses when intense social distancing measures, including school dismissals, were implemented in response to the COVID-19 pandemic,” the researchers suggest. “This would have increased transmission potential when schools resumed.”

They note that a similar surge in common colds was seen in adults in England a few weeks after schools reopened there in September.
“Nonpharmaceutical interventions might differ”

As for how the viruses still managed to spread with the COVID-19 precautions in place in the reopened schools, the researchers have another hypothesis: basically, COVID precautions don’t work well against common cold germs. For example, face masks have been shown to successfully block coronaviruses and influenza viruses—but they’re less effective at blocking rhinoviruses. And rhinoviruses are hardier than coronaviruses and influenza viruses when it comes to withstanding disinfectants.

Generally, different respiratory viruses use the same set of transmission modes (surfaces, respiratory droplets, etc.), but “how much each mode contributes to transmission of a specific virus remains unclear; therefore, the effectiveness of certain nonpharmaceutical interventions might differ between viruses,” the researchers write. In other words, masks and disinfection may be highly effective against flu viruses and SARS-CoV-2, but they may not be as effective against your standard snotty-kid germs.

“Our findings highlight the increased risk posed by common cold viruses in locations where schools have been closed or dismissed for extended periods during the COVID-19 pandemic,” the researchers conclude.


BETH MOLE is Ars Technica’s health reporter. She’s interested in biomedical research, infectious disease, health policy and law, and has a Ph.D. in microbiology.


RUSSIAN HACKING ACCUSATIONS —

Ukraine says Russia hacked its document portal and planted malicious files

Ukraine says Russia also backed massive DDoS attack using never-before-seen methods.


DAN GOODIN - 2/24/2021 ARS TECHNICA


Ukraine has accused the Russian government of hacking into one of its government Web portals and planting malicious documents that would install malware on end users’ computers.

“The purpose of the attack was the mass contamination of information resources of public authorities, as this system is used for the circulation of documents in most public authorities,” officials from Ukraine’s National Coordination Center for Cybersecurity said in a statement published on Wednesday. “The malicious documents contained a macro that secretly downloaded a program to remotely control a computer when opening the files.”


FURTHER READING

Wednesday’s statement said that the methods used in the attack connected the hackers to the Russian Federation. Ukraine didn’t say if the attack succeeded in infecting any authorities’ computers.

FURTHER READING

A large body of evidence has linked Russia’s government to several highly aggressive hacks against Ukraine in the past.

 The hacks include:

A computer intrusion in late 2015 against regional power authorities in Ukraine caused a power failure that left hundreds of thousands of homes without electricity in the dead of winter.

Almost exactly one year later, a second attack at an electricity substation outside Kyiv that once again left residents without power.

A malicious update for widely used tax software in Ukraine that distributed disk-wiping malware to users. The so-called NotPetya worm ended up shutting down computers worldwide and led to the world’s most costly hack.

Elsewhere, Russia’s SVR intelligence agency has also been accused of carrying out the recently discovered hack that targeted at least nine US agencies and 100 companies in a supply chain attack against customers of the SolarWinds network management software.

Wednesday’s statement didn’t identify which of several known Russian hacking groups was accused of the breach.

FURTHER READING

Macro attacks like the one mentioned in the statement typically work by tricking Microsoft Office users into enabling macros, often under the guise that the macro is required for the document to display properly. The macros then download malware from an attacker-controlled server and install it.

The statement provided no details on how or when Ukraine’s System of Electronic Interaction of Executive Bodies—a portal that distributes documents to public authorities—was hacked or how long the intrusion lasted.

Indicators that someone has been compromised include:

Domain: enterox.ru

IP addresses: 109.68.212.97

Link (URL): http://109.68.212.97/infant.php

Wednesday’s statement came two days after Ukraine’s National Coordination Center for Cybersecurity reported what it said were “massive DDoS attacks on the Ukrainian segment of the Internet, mainly on the websites of the security and defense sector.” An analysis revealed that the attacks used a new mechanism that hadn’t been seen before. DDoS attacks take down targeted servers by bombarding them with more data than they can process.



DAN GOODIN is the Security Editor at Ars Technica, which he joined in 2012 after working for The Register, the Associated Press, Bloomberg News, and other publications.
ONLINE TRANSITION —

Best Buy lays off 5,000 workers as it shifts focus to online sales

The pandemic has accelerated Best Buy's transition to selling online.


TIMOTHY B. LEE - 2/26/2021, 

Snow outside of a Best Buy store in Oklahoma City, 
Oklahoma, on Feb. 17, 2021.
Nick Oxford/Bloomberg via Getty 


Best Buy says it has trimmed its headcount by 21,000 over the last year as the pandemic has accelerated the company's transition to selling online. Most of those losses were due to attrition—including workers who were furloughed during the pandemic last year and then chose not to return to work. But Best Buy says that in recent weeks it formally laid off 5,000 workers. The company now has about 102,000 workers—including employees in its retail stores and corporate headquarters.

A company will often lay off workers because it is struggling. The last year has certainly been a challenging period for some brick-and-mortar businesses. This week, for example, electronics giant Fry's shut down all of its stores.

But that doesn't seem to be the situation at Best Buy, which has weathered the pandemic fairly well. In the last quarter, same-store sales at Best Buy's brick and mortar stores were up 12 percent compared to a year earlier. Meanwhile, online sales were up an impressive 89 percent.

As a result, online sales accounted for 43 percent of total sales in Best Buy's fourth quarter, which ends on January 31. That's way up from 25 percent in 2019 and 22 percent in 2018. And Best Buy believes that this shift will be mostly permanent, with 40 percent of sales coming from online in the new fiscal year.

Best Buy is downsizing its physical retail presence


Best Buy says its recent changes are an effort to adjust to this new market reality. Traditional stores aren't going away, but they're becoming less important. Best Buy says that it has been closing about 20 stores per year over the last two years and expects to accelerate the process in the coming year. Best Buy has 450 stores (out of roughly 1,000) whose leases will run out in the next three years. The company says that it always rigorously evaluates a store before renewing its lease, but in the future, the company will have "higher thresholds on renewing leases." In other words, under-performing stores will get shuttered more quickly than in the past.

FURTHER READING
Confirmed: Fry’s Electronics going out of business, shutting down all stores

That will mean fewer workers overall and particularly fewer full-time workers. As it laid off 5,000 mostly full-time workers, Best Buy is planning to add 2,000 new part-time jobs.

Best Buy is also working to increase the flexibility of its workforce by training workers to perform a mix of face-to-face and online-oriented jobs. For example, during a slow shift, workers with appropriate training can pick up customer calls from Best Buy's national hotlines.

Best Buy plans to reconfigure stores to devote less space to showrooms in the front of the store and more space to storage and shipping facilities in the back. Store workers will be able to spend some time helping customers face to face and some time packing online orders.

Some parts of Best Buy’s business are booming


This is all in the context of a generally upbeat financial picture for the company. In a call with investors on Thursday, Best Buy executives reported that the pandemic has boosted demand for several categories of products that Best Buy stocks. For example, the company has struggled to keep gaming consoles on store shelves because "there just hasn't been enough inventory to meet demand."

FURTHER READING Amazon and Best Buy team up to sell TVs, but it’s a risky move for Best Buy

Remote workers have been spending heavily on a range of work-from-home products, from "high tech chairs to monitors to standing desks." Best Buy says that printing products are in perpetually short supply.

Best Buy also says that home theater equipment and personal fitness gear has been selling briskly as more people exercise and watch movies at home. Kitchen gadgets have also been selling well.

Moreover, Best Buy believes the spending surge is unlikely to abate in 2021. While many workers have struggled financially during the pandemic, a lot of white-collar workers have seen their savings rise as they kept their jobs but couldn't spend as much on restaurant meals, travel, or other luxuries. So Best Buy expects strong sales of luxury gadgets to continue well into 2021.

ARS 

TIMOTHY B. LEE is a senior reporter covering tech policy, blockchain technologies and the future of transportation. He lives in Washington DC.
BHOPAL REDUX
Residents of an Indian slum thought they were getting vaccinated like everyone else but were unknowingly part of a clinical trial

Madison Hall THE INSIDER 
2/26/2021
A healthcare worker reacts as she receives a dose of COVISHIELD, a COVID-19 vaccine manufactured by Serum Institute of India, during one of the world's largest COVID-19 vaccination campaigns, in India on January 16, 2021. Danish Siddiqui/Reuters

A white van drove through the slums of Bhopal in central India advertising a COVID-19 vaccine.

The van reportedly said that anyone who got one would receive 750 rupees.

But according to CNN, the residents were unknowingly part of a vaccine trial.


It seemed like a win-win for residents in the slums of Bhopal in central India when a white van drove through the streets advertising, "Come and take the coronavirus vaccine and get 750 rupees!" from its speaker system.

But according to a new report from CNN, the shots doled out were actually a part of the third phase of India's Covaxin clinical trials — and most of the recipients were completely unaware they were now part of a medical study.

Covaxin is India's first proprietary COVID-19 vaccine. The vaccine has yet to be fully approved for public use and is currently only approved for restricted emergency use. As of late January, Bharat Biotech has stockpiled more than 20 million doses of Covaxin and is pushing to make 700 million by the end of 2021.

Many of the people who received vaccines through the van's instruction live in the Shankar Nagar Slum, just miles from the site of a 1984 industrial disaster that exposed an estimated 500,000 people to a cloud of toxic gas, CNN reported. Some locals in the area still report feeling health issues from the incident decades years later. 
Bhopal disaster - Wikipedia


CNN interviewed 21 people in the area who received shots in the trial. Many said they were drawn to get the vaccine because of the promise of 750 rupees, approximately $10 in the US.

"I went because of the greed of 750 rupees," Hira Bai, a mother of three told CNN. "Anyway, we are used to dying ... my life has no value."

Public health experts said the ethics of providing 750 rupees is questionable, especially if it was used as an incentive to bring in more volunteers.

Arun Shrivastav, the head of the pharmacology department at the Gandhi Medical College in Bhopal, told CNN it would be "unethical" and "totally wrong" if the country advertised the trial with a promise of 750 rupees.

"If there is anything like this happening, then it cannot be counted in the trial and the trial would be barred," Shrivastav told CNN.

Anil Kumar Dixit, the dean of People's College of Medical Sciences and Research Centre in Bhopal, affirmed that his hospital paid the participants 750 rupees but said it was only to cover any missed wages and was not meant as an incentive.

Many participants told CNN they weren't aware they may have received a placebo shot.

Dixit told CNN that everyone involved was made well aware that the shots were part of the trial, but over half of the people CNN spoke with are illiterate and were unable to read any of the instructions or forms that health officials provided.

For those who cannot read, he said, officials explained everything in Hindi or English before participants signed any forms.

Many of the Bhopal participants noted they weren't asked about underlying health conditions before taking part in the trial. One pregnant woman told CNN she received the first of two injections before being turned away for the second dose due to the pregnancy.

According to Johns Hopkins University, India is home to the fourth-most COVID-19 deaths in the world, with more than 156,000 recorded.

The country is pushing for its healthcare workers to get vaccinated, but the healthcare workers continue to turn down the homegrown vaccine. According to Al Jazeera, India has vaccinated more than 10 million medical professionals, but only 11% of them agreed to take the Covaxin shot. The rest opted for an AstraZeneca vaccine.
Ted Cruz rants about comedians, late-night TV, and mask-wearing before shouting at people to 'just have fun' in wild CPAC speech

Jake Lahut and Sonam Sheth
THE INSIDER

Sen. Ted Cruz. John Raoux/AP Photo

Ted Cruz's CPAC speech began with a joke on the Cancún scandal and ended in a scream about freedom.

Cruz railed against late-night TV, mocked mask-wearing, and expressed his support for Trump.

"That is our party," he yelled, "and these deplorables are here to stay."


Sen. Ted Cruz's speech at this year's Conservative Political Action Conference went off the rails Friday as he shouted about late-night comedians, mask-wearing, and President Joe Biden.



"Orlando is awesome. It's not as nice as Cancún, but it's nice," the Republican senator said, referring to the scandal he sparked when he left storm-ravaged Texas for Cancún, Mexico, with his family last week. Cruz returned to Houston a day later after drawing sharp criticism for leaving the state he represented for a vacation in the middle of a devastating winter storm.



Later in his speech, Cruz issued a rallying cry in support of former President Donald Trump.

"There are a whole lot of voices in Washington that want to just erase the last four years, want to go back to the world before where we had government of the lobbyists, by the lobbyists, and for the lobbyists," Cruz said.

"Where the Republicans' compelling message was, 'Republicans: We waste less,'" he added. "And they look at Donald J. Trump, and they look at the millions and millions of people inspired who went to battle fighting alongside President Trump, and they're terrified and they want him to go away."

"Let me tell you this right now: Donald J. Trump ain't going anywhere," Cruz added.

The former president once suggested that the senator's father helped assassinate President John F. Kennedy and insinuated his wife was ugly.

Cruz also reappropriated former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's "basket of deplorables" line to underscore Trumpism as the future of the party.

"That is our party," he yelled, "and these deplorables are here to stay."

Here are some other high  
LOW lights from Cruz's speech:

Cruz called mask-wearing is virtue signaling: "We're going to wear masks for the next 300 years," Cruz said. "And by the way, not just one mask — two, three, four — you can't have too many masks. How much virtue do you want to signal?"

He railed against comedians and cancel culture before telling people to "just have fun": "You know, Jerry Seinfeld doesn't tell comedy anymore because then he jokes that funny is canceled," Cruz said. "You know, 'SNL' is unwatchable. The late-night comedy, they stand up and say, 'We hate Donald Trump.' Yeah, no kidding. We didn't get that the last 9,000 times you said that."

Cruz said Democrats were trying to turn skaters into socialists: "And let me tell you, right now, in Los Angeles, there's some skater kid who's 19, who's told that it's hip and chic and cool to be a leftist socialist, man," he said. "Who's going to hear a message, 'Wait a second, these guys don't want me to speak? Think? Have fun? Do what I want to do?'"

He said there were no "Black Lives Matter" demonstrations in Houston last year because of the Second Amendment: "In Houston where I live, I have to tell you, there weren't any rioters because let's be very clear: If there had been, they would discover what the state of Texas thinks about the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms," Cruz said.

Cruz rounded out his speech by saying the US was in a period of "dark days" and that "the country will come back to sanity." He added: "And mark my words, 2022 is going to be a fantastic election year, and so is 2024 as we stand together and defend liberty, defend the Constitution, defend the Bill of Rights of every American."





In closing, Cruz quoted William Wallace 
and screamed, "Freedom!"



 

THE DOGS ARE MORE VALUABLE THAN THE DOG WALKER

Lady Gaga's two French bulldogs that were stolen have been recovered safely

LADY GAGA OFFERS $500,000 REWARD 
FOR THE DOGS

The woman who returned the dogs appeared to be uninvolved in the theft. 

The dogwalker who was shot in the attack is in stable condition.

NOR DOES DOG WALKER HAVE A NAME

(IT'S RYAN)
Myanmar police move to stamp out protests after envoy appeals to U.N. to stop coup




(Reuters) - Myanmar police moved decisively on Saturday in a bid to prevent opponents of military rule gathering after Myanmar’s U.N. envoy urged the United Nations to use “any means necessary” to stop a Feb. 1 coup.

The Southeast Asian country has been in turmoil since the army seized power and detained elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi and much of her party leadership, alleging fraud in a November election her party had won in a landslide.

Uncertainty has grown over Suu Kyi’s whereabouts, as the independent Myanmar Now website on Friday quoted officials of her National League for Democracy (NLD) party as saying she had been moved this week from house arrest to an undisclosed location.

The coup has brought hundreds of thousands of protesters to Myanmar’s streets and drawn condemnation from Western countries, with some imposing limited sanctions.

Police were out in force early in the main city of Yangon and elsewhere, deployed at usual protest sites and detaining people as they congregated, witnesses said.

People still gathered, their numbers building through the morning, to chant and sing, then melting away into side streets as police advanced, apparently setting off stun grenades and firing into the air.

Similar scenes played out in the second city of Mandalay, and elsewhere, media reported. A protester in the central town of Monwya said police had fired water cannon as they surrounded a crowd.

“They’ve blocked all the ways out,” Aye Aye Tint told Reuters from the town. “They used water cannon against peaceful protesters, they shouldn’t treat people like that.”

At the U.N. General Assembly, Myanmar’s Ambassador Kyaw Moe Tun said he was speaking on behalf of Suu Kyi’s government and appealed to the body “to use any means necessary to take action against the Myanmar military and to provide safety and security for the people”.

“We need further strongest possible action from the international community to immediately end the military coup, to stop oppressing the innocent people ... and to restore the democracy,” he told the 193-member group, receiving applause as he finished.



‘PREVAIL’


Kyaw Moe Tun appeared emotional as he read the statement on behalf of a group of elected politicians that he said represented the legitimate government.

Delivering his final words in Burmese, the career diplomat raised the three-finger salute of pro-democracy protesters and announced “our cause will prevail”.

Reuters was not immediately able to contact the army for comment.

Opponents of the coup hailed Kyaw Moe Tun as a hero and flooded social media with messages of thanks.

“The people will win and the power-obsessed junta will fall,” one protest leader, Ei Thinzar Maung, wrote on Facebook.


U.N. Special Rapporteur Tom Andrews said he was overwhelmed as he watched the ambassador’s “act of courage”.

“Despite enormous pressure to do otherwise, he spoke up for the people of Myanmar and against an illegal coup. It’s time for the world to answer that courageous call with action,” Andrews said on Twitter.

U.N. special envoy on Myanmar Christine Schraner Burgener called for a collective “clear signal in support of democracy”, saying no country should recognise or legitimise the junta.

China’s envoy did not criticise the coup and said the situation was Myanmar’s “internal affairs”, adding that it supported diplomacy by Southeast Asian countries, which protesters fear could give credibility to the ruling generals.


‘LOSS OF RIGHTS’


A lawyer acting for Suu Kyi, Khin Maung Zaw, told Reuters he had also heard from NLD officials that she had been moved from her home in the capital, Naypyitaw, but could not confirm it. Authorities did not respond to a request for comment.

The lawyer said he had been given no access to Suu Kyi ahead of her next hearing on Monday, adding: “I’m concerned that there will be a loss of rights to access to justice and access to legal counsel”.

Protesters have been demanding the release of Suu Kyi, 75, and recognition of the result of last year’s election.

Military chief General Min Aung Hlaing says authorities were using minimal force. Nevertheless, at least three protesters have died. The army says a policeman was also killed.

Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace laureate and daughter of Myanmar’s independence hero, spent nearly 15 years under house arrest under previous juntas. She faces charges of illegally importing six walkie-talkie radios and of violating a natural disaster law by breaching coronavirus protocols.


The army has promised an election but not given a date. It has imposed a one-year state of emergency.

The question of an election is at the centre of a diplomatic effort by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, of which Myanmar is a member. Indonesia has taken the lead, but coup opponents fear the efforts could legitimise the junta.