World News

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/2926436

A Hong Kong man is facing as long as 10 years in jail after he pleaded guilty to sedition for wearing a T-shirt featuring a protest slogan.

In court on Monday, Chu Kai-pong, 27, was the first person to be convicted under Hong Kong’s tough homegrown national security law enacted in March.

[...]

He was arrested on June 12 at a train station wearing a T-shirt with the slogan “Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our times”, and a yellow mask printed with “FDNOL” – the shorthand for another pro-democracy slogan, “five demands, not one less”. June 12 is a date associated with protests in the city in 2019.

[...]

Chu’s lawyer argued that the maximum he could be given would be two years.

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador on Friday asked the warring factions of the Sinaloa cartel to act “responsibly” so no one else gets killed, after a week of escalating violence nearly paralyzed the Sinaloa state capital, Culiacan.

...

The exchange Friday during the president’s morning press briefing is the latest in a series of instances where López Obrador has downplayed the clashes between factions of the Sinaloa cartel.

The president, who leaves office on Sept. 30, has repeatedly refused to confront cartels, laying out various justifications for his “hugs, not bullets” strategy offering opportunities to youths so they won’t join cartels.

The latest clashes in Culiacan are the latest example of the violence that continues to plague Mexico, where cartels employ increasingly sophisticated forms of warfare including roadside bombs or IEDs, trenches, home-made armored vehicles and bomb-dropping drones.

Two German warships are visiting the Philippines for the first time in over 20 years after making a notable transit through the Taiwan Strait.

The port call, which Germany said is a reaffirmation of its commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific region and rules-based international order, rhetoric commonly used by the US, as well as a testament to its defense cooperation with the Philippines, is set against the backdrop of flaring tensions between China and the Philippines due to disputes in the South China Sea.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/29157181

The death toll from massive flooding in Myanmar in the wake of Typhoon Yagi has doubled to 226, as the UN warned as many as 630,000 people could be in need of help.

Yagi swept across northern Vietnam, Laos, Thailand and Myanmar more than a week ago with powerful winds and an enormous amount of rain, triggering floods and landslides that have killed more than 500 people, according to official figures.

The article:

Senegal’s President Bassirou Diomaye Faye has dissolved the opposition-led parliament, paving the way for snap elections six months after he was voted in on an anti-establishment platform.

Faye said working with the assembly had grown difficult after members refused to start discussions on the budget law and rejected efforts to dissolve wasteful state institutions.

“I dissolve the national assembly to ask the sovereign people for the institutional means to bring about the systemic transformation that I have promised to deliver,” Faye said in a brief speech late on Thursday.

The elections will be held on November 17.

Observers say Faye’s party, PASTEF (African Patriots of Senegal for Work, Ethics and Fraternity), has a high chance of securing a majority, given his popularity and his victory margin in the March presidential election, which he won with 54 percent of votes.

The Benno Bokk Yaakar opposition platform led by former President Macky Sall condemned the move. It said Faye had convened a legislative session under pretences to announce the dissolution and accused him of “perjury”.

Faye, 44, won the vote in March to become Africa’s youngest elected leader less than two weeks after he was released from prison.

His rise has reflected widespread frustration among Senegal’s youth with the country’s direction – a common sentiment across Africa – which has the world’s youngest population and a number of leaders accused of clinging to power for decades.

During the presidential campaign, Faye promised widespread reforms to improve the living standards of common Senegalese, including fighting corruption, reviewing fishing permits for foreign companies, and securing a bigger share of the country’s natural resources for the population.

But six months later, these pledges have yet to materialise.

The president and Ousmane Sonko, the prime minister and a popular opposition figure who helped catapult Faye to victory, have blamed the parliament.

PASTEF does not hold a majority in the assembly, which Faye says has blocked him from executing the promised reforms.

In June, the opposition coalition cancelled a budgetary debate in a dispute over whether Sonko was required to issue his government’s policy roadmap, with him arguing that he was not required to.

The assembly has until the end of December to vote on the budget for next year, but new legislative elections might make it hard to meet this deadline.

An escalating series of clashes in the South China Sea between the Philippines and China could draw the U.S., which has a mutual defense treaty with the Philippines, into the conflict.

A 60 Minutes crew got a close look at the tense situation when traveling on a Philippine Coast Guard ship that was rammed by the Chinese Coast Guard.

China has repeatedly rammed Philippine ships and blasted them with water cannons over the last two years. There are ongoing conversations between Washington and Manila about which scenarios would trigger U.S. involvement, Philippine Secretary of National Defense Gilberto Teodoro said in an interview.

"I really don't know the end state," Teodoro said. "All I know is that we cannot let them get away with what they're doing."

China as "the proverbial schoolyard bully"

China claims sovereignty over almost all of the South China Sea, through which more than $3 trillion in goods flow annually. But in 2016, an international tribunal at the Hague ruled the Philippines has exclusive economic rights in a 200-mile zone that includes the area where the ship with the 60 Minutes team on board got rammed.

China does not recognize the international tribunal's ruling.

Huw Edwards, ex-host of the broadcaster's flagship news program, had pleaded guilty to receiving indecent images of children. There was an outcry over Edwards continuing to receive salary payments following his arrest.

The current death toll in Gaza is close to 42,000, but experts believe that figure is likely a gross undercount.

Chu Kai-pong, 27, pleaded guilty to ‘act with seditious intent’ for displaying slogan: ‘Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our times

A man in Hong Kong has pleaded guilty to sedition for wearing a T-shirt with a protest slogan, becoming the first person to be convicted under the city’s controversial national security law known as Article 23, passed in March.

Chu Kai-pong, 27, pleaded guilty to one count of “doing acts with seditious intent”.

Under the new security law, the maximum sentence for the offence has been increased from two years to seven years in prison and could even go up to 10 years if “collusion with foreign forces” is found to be involved.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/20367445

Emma Graham-Harrison

Sat 14 Sep 2024 12.30 EDT

Former BBC news anchor Huw Edwards, once one of the most prominent media figures in Britain, was given a suspended prison sentence Monday for images of child sexual abuse on his phone.

Edwards, 63, pleaded guilty in Westminster Magistrates’ Court in July to three counts of making indecent images of children, a charge related to photos sent to him on the WhatsApp messaging service by a man convicted of distributing images of child sex abuse.

Edwards’ fall from grace over the past year has caused turmoil for the BBC after it was revealed the publicly funded broadcaster paid him about 200,000 pounds ($263,000) for five months of his salary after he had been arrested in November while on leave. The BBC has asked him to pay it back.

Ukraine said on Monday it had asked the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to join humanitarian efforts in Russia's Kursk region following a cross-border incursion by Ukrainian forces.

Ukraine's army remains in the Kursk region more than a month after launching the assault, in which President Volodymyr Zelenskiy says Kyiv has taken control of about 100 settlements. Russia's Defence Ministry said on Monday its forces had regained control of two more villages.

"Ukraine is ready to facilitate their work and prove its adherence to international humanitarian law," (Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii) Sybiha said on X after visiting the Sumy region, from where Ukrainian forces launched the cross-borer attack.

Hundreds of thousands of Israelis have taken to the streets in recent days to demand that their government secure a deal that would release Israeli hostages held in Gaza. Nearly two-thirds of Israelis support such a deal — if not to put an end to the genocide, to at least put an end to the war for the sake of their own population. Why won’t their government listen?

The distance between U.S. rhetoric around Israel’s supposed democracy and the actual actions of the Israeli state became clearer than ever on July 18, when the Israeli government passed a resolution rejecting any creation of a Palestinian state — a blow to decades-old U.S. policy and growing international consensus around the necessity for Palestinian self-determination. The resolution, which rejects the establishment of a state even as part of a negotiated settlement with Israel, said “the establishment of a Palestinian state in the heart of the Land of Israel would pose an existential danger to the State of Israel and its citizens, perpetuate the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and destabilize the region.”

Ceasefire talks have stalled within the Knesset, the Israeli legislative body, for almost three months since President Biden proposed a deal, in large part due to the chokehold that far right ministers within the Israeli Parliament have on the coalition government. In order to understand the current moment, it is essential to understand how the Israeli Knesset works. The heart of the Israeli political system lies in the 120-member Knesset, which functions as both the Israeli legislative body and house of representatives. The Knesset also elects the president, a largely symbolic role as most of the executive power exists under the prime minister.

Even Palestinian citizens of Israel who reside within the 1948 borders ultimately lack full citizenship rights compared to Jewish Israelis. In 2018, the Knesset passed the Jewish Nation-State Basic Law, altering the constitutional framework of the state and establishing the ethnic-religious identity of the state as exclusively Jewish. The Nation-State law enshrined Jewish supremacy in the land. It codified what had been state policy of discrimination against Palestinians into a law with constitutional status, and was another nail in the coffin for the illusion of Israeli democracy. Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, says the Nation-State law “denies the collective rights of Palestinian citizens of Israel.” Palestinian legal scholar Mazen Masri argued that “this act demonstrates that Israel is closer to apartheid than democracy.”

The Judicial Reform protests highlight the inherent inconsistency of the premise of Israeli democracy, a contradiction that is now more visible to the world than it was before October 7. Palestinians’ demand for freedom — in Gaza, the West Bank and the 1948 borders of the state — is being heard and acknowledged on a scale unlike ever before. As Israel faces increasing international pressure and isolation, Israelis will have to make a choice between continually escalating fascism and a transformation of the fundamental nature of the state that guarantees freedom for Palestinians, and safety, dignity, and a thriving future for everyone between the river and the sea.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says Ukraine should be allowed to strike deep inside Russia, despite Moscow threatening that this would draw Canada and its allies into direct war.

"Canada fully supports Ukraine using long-range weaponry to prevent and interdict Russia's continued ability to degrade Ukrainian civilian infrastructure, and mostly to kill innocent civilians in their unjust war," Trudeau told reporters at a news conference in Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue, Que., on Friday.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/20366948

from Deutsche Welle

Elizabeth Grenier

September 12, 2024