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Softbank Group Corp has scrapped an agreement to spend US$3 billion to buy WeWork stock from former chief executive officer Adam Neumann and other shareholders, despite threats of legal action from some members of its board.

Softbank had agreed to buy the shares from Neumann, Benchmark Capital and others as part of a bailout package last year, but notified stockholders in the middle of last month that conditions for the deal had not been met.

Yesterday, after the deal’s deadline passed, Softbank confirmed it would end the offer, citing five conditions that were not satisfied by the closing date.

“Softbank remains fully committed to the success of WeWork and has taken significant steps to strengthen the company since October, including newly committed capital, the development of a new strategic plan for WeWork and the hiring of a new, world-class management team,” Softbank chief legal officer Rob Townsend said.

“The tender offer was an offer to buy shares directly from other major stockholders and its termination has no impact on WeWork’s operations or customers,” he said.

Softbank shares rose 2.5 percent while the broader Japanese market fell.

A WeWork committee of two independent directors said they disagreed with the decision and suggested there might be legal action.

“The Special Committee is surprised and disappointed at this development, and remains committed to reaching a resolution that is in the best interest of WeWork and its minority shareholders, including WeWork’s employees and former employees. The Special Committee will evaluate all of its legal options, including litigation,” the committee, made up of Benchmark’s Bruce Dunlevie and another director, Lew Frankfort, said in an e-mailed statement.

The share purchase was hammered out in October last year as part of Softbank’s rescue of WeWork, after the co-working company’s failed initial public offering left it weeks away from running out of money.

In the deal, the Japanese conglomerate would have taken a stake of almost 80 percent in the company and buy US$3 billion in shares from investors as well as current and former employees.

Neumann, ousted in the deal, was set to sell up to US$970 million in shares. The generous exit package angered many of his employees, thousands of whom had their jobs eliminated in the following months as WeWork parent We Co tried to cut its expenses.

WeWork signs long-term leases with landlords around the world and then rents that space to smaller companies and freelance workers, a business that has been particularly vulnerable to the coronavirus and economic slowdown.

In a letter to bondholders, Softbank said it did not expect to hit its financial targets for this year.

“Given our fiduciary duty to our shareholders, it would be irresponsible of Softbank to ignore the fact that the conditions were not satisfied and to nevertheless consummate the tender offer,” Townsend said.

In the past few weeks, the shareholder buyout deal has become increasingly contentious.

Softbank sent the letter to WeWork investors saying it could withdraw from the agreement if certain conditions were not met by the deadline.

Softbank cited regulatory concerns and a handful of government investigations into WeWork, including from the US Securities and Exchange Commission and the US Department of Justice.

The two WeWork independent board directors responded, saying they would consider legal action if Softbank pulled out.

“Its excuses for not trying to close are inappropriate and dishonest,” a spokeswoman for the directors had said in a statement.

Softbank and its affiliates have committed more than US$14.25 billion to WeWork to date, including US$5.45 billion since October, the company said in its statement.

WeWork had US$4.4 billion in pro forma cash and cash commitments at the end of last year, Softbank said.

Separately, Softbank said it completed the sale of its US unit Sprint Corp to T-Mobile US Inc. The deal removes about US$40 billion in net debt from the Japanese conglomerate’s balance sheet.

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title: Softbank to abandon US$3bn WeWork investor deal


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Walt Disney Co’s Disney+ content is to be available for the first time in the Middle East and North Africa on regional pay television and online streaming service provider OSN from Thursday next week.

Dubai-headquartered OSN has signed a “long-term” exclusive distribution rights agreement, OSN chief executive Patrick Tillieux said, while declining to disclose further details.

Disney+ original programming, including hit show The Mandalorian, would be available on OSN’s pay television and online streaming services in 17 regional markets, including Egypt, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

The online streaming service costs US$9.50 a month.

It is the first time content of Disney+, Walt Disney’s streaming service, has been distributed through a third-party provider, OSN said.

Walt Disney did not respond to an e-mailed request for comment.

The deal is likely to intensify competition with Netflix, which has a strong regional presence.

OSN secured the exclusive Disney+ rights following a restructuring last year in which the company, with revenue of about US$500 million a year, shed more than 60 percent of its 2,300 workforce.

“We have come out of a dark period,” Tillieux said.

He said he was confident in the business outlook for this year even though the company was no longer able to sell and promote products in shopping centers closed because of the coronavirus pandemic.

However, with more people staying home, pay television and online usage have surged and online sales have increased over the past two weeks, he said.

The pandemic has also forced OSN to market the launch of Disney+ content entirely online, canceling traditional outdoor advertising plans, as few people now leave their homes.

“We are pushing heavily on ... digital,” Tillieux said.

OSN’s majority shareholder is Kuwait’s largest listed investment company, Kuwait Projects Co.

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title: Disney+ signs exclusive Middle East deal on OSN


title: World Business Quick Take

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MEXICO

Economy could contract 4%

The government forecast the economy could contract by as much as 3.9 percent this year, but predicted a rebound next year to as much as 3.5 percent growth, the Ministry of Finance said on Wednesday in an annual economic report used to guide the budget. “The economic forecast under the current circumstances has a high level of uncertainty amid the complexity of the [coronavirus] epidemic, making it difficult to establish a specific growth forecast for the domestic economy,” it said. The government put an upper limit for this year’s growth forecast of 0.1 percent. It also forecast that annual inflation would reach 3.5 percent at the end of the year, before coming down to 3.2 percent next year.

REAL ESTATE

UK market at standstill

Britain’s housing market is grinding to a halt after the government’s shutdown of much of the economy, cutting short a nascent recovery that saw prices rise at their strongest pace in more than two years last month, mortgage lender Nationwide said yesterday. Prices grew by 3 percent compared with March last year, their biggest rise since January 2018 and stronger than a median forecast for a 2 percent increase in a Reuters poll of economists. House prices in London rose by an annual 1 percent in the first quarter of this year after 10 consecutive quarters of declines, Nationwide said.

ENERGY

Whiting officers get bonuses

Whiting Petroleum Corp’s board approved US$14.6 million in cash bonuses for top executives days before the shale oil producer filed for bankruptcy. Chief executive officer Brad Holly is to collect US$6.4 million of the total, to be “paid immediately,” the company said in a filing on Wednesday. Four other executives, including chief financial officer Correne Loeffler, are to receive the rest. Whiting, one of the biggest producers in North Dakota’s Bakken formation, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Wednesday after the plunge in oil prices left it unable to pay its debts. Its board approved the bonuses on Thursday last week.

E-COMMERCE

Amazon wins trademark suit

Amazon.com Inc is not liable for unwittingly stocking trademark infringing goods for third-party sellers, Europe’s top court said yesterday, handing the US online retail giant victory in its battle against cosmetics company Coty Inc. Amazon found itself in a German court after Coty said it breached its trademark rights by stocking its Davidoff perfume for third-party sellers and should be held responsible for such practices. The German court sought guidance from the Luxembourg-based Court of Justice of the EU, which backed the US company.

TELECOMS

T-Mobile merger complete

US operators T-Mobile US Inc and Sprint Corp finally merged on Wednesday, the companies said, bringing an end to two years of negotiations as the pair aimed to create a giant capable of competing with the sector’s leading players. The combined firm would have more than 100 million customers, claiming the scale to compete with larger wireless rivals Verizon Communications Inc and AT&T Inc. They said the combined company would operate under the name T-Mobile. The new company has promised to provide 5G to 99 percent of the US population within six years.

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title: PRC’s misplaced virus propaganda

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Barely a month ago, China was in the grip of COVID-19. Thousands of new infections were confirmed every day.

Hospitals were overwhelmed. People were dying by the hundreds and they could not leave their homes.

The draconian lockdown seems to have worked — China’s outbreak appears to be under control — but China’s leaders are apparently ignoring the outbreak’s most essential lessons. A review of their handling of the crisis bears this out.

Upon learning of a new coronavirus that had emerged in Hubei Province’s Wuhan, local authorities’ first instinct was to suppress the information. Police reprimanded whistle-blowers such as the Wuhan doctor Li Wenliang (李文亮), who subsequently died of the disease. (Wuhan police have apologized to Li’s family.)

This should have motivated Chinese leaders to weigh the costs of censorship and reconsider the appointment of unqualified party members to key public health positions. The head of the Hubei Provincial Health Commission, dismissed during the crisis, had no medical training or experience in public health.

Moreover, some other nations, especially Taiwan and Singapore, managed to contain the coronavirus without incurring the high costs that China did when it placed at least 760 million people under varying degrees of residential lockdown.

China’s leaders should be looking to these nations for lessons on a smarter crisis response.

However, far from learning from past mistakes, China’s leaders are trying to cover them up. As virtually the entire global economy effectively shuts down to contain the China-born virus and deaths in Italy — the pandemic’s new epicenter — exceed 13,000, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has shifted its propaganda machine into high gear, as it aims to change the narrative of the crisis.

At home, this has meant touting the CCP’s leadership in mobilizing the nation to “win the war” against the coronavirus. It has also meant encouraging the spread on Chinese social media of exaggerated or outright false stories about Western democracies’ “inept” responses to the pandemic.

Abroad, China’s propaganda machine is trumpeting declining infection rates as evidence that strong centralized leadership is more effective than democratic governance and Beijing is sending humanitarian assistance — including healthcare workers and medical supplies — to hard-hit nations such as Iran, Italy and the Philippines.

However, if Chinese leaders hope to use the pandemic to build and project soft power, they are likely to be disappointed. For starters, the world is nowhere near ready to forget the role that its initial cover-up played in allowing the coronavirus to spread.

The prevailing view outside China today is that, had the nation’s leaders taken decisive action immediately and transparently, the pandemic might have been contained. The CCP can challenge that narrative all it wants, but it cannot force international media to do the same.

Chinese propaganda has never gotten much purchase in the free marketplace of ideas. Most of the CCP’s previous attempts to influence international public opinion have fallen flat.

Few are tempted by a Chinese-style containment strategy. Shutting down the entire nation has cost China dearly in economic terms, with first-quarter GDP expected to plunge 9 percent. If a second wave of infections strikes, as is likely, repeating the same strategy would lead to economic ruin.

Of course, if this were the only way to save lives, people might be on board, but Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore all seem to have struck a better balance between protecting public health and sustaining economic activity.

Against this backdrop, China’s humanitarian efforts are likely to do little to repair its reputation. It is better than offering no help at all, but the nation could do a lot more to bolster public health globally — beginning with sharing the massive amounts of data and knowledge it has gathered on the coronavirus.

Beijing could scale up production of protective equipment, especially protective suits and masks. China made half the world’s masks before COVID-19 and it has since expanded production nearly 12-fold. If it really does have the coronavirus under control, there is nothing stopping it from donating this life-saving equipment to hard-hit nations, which are facing severe shortages.

In particular, China should make a major donation, perhaps about 1 billion masks and 1 million suits — a 10-day supply for 50,000 healthcare workers — to the US. This could ease tensions between the two nations just enough to enable them — together with the EU and Japan — to pursue a coordinated response to the pandemic, including action to shore up the global financial system and stimulus packages to stave off a depression.

When the pandemic is finally over, people would remember what China did, not what it said. It can go down in history either as the reason the COVID-19 crisis began, or as one of the reasons it ended.

Pei Minxin is a professor of government at Claremont McKenna College and a nonresident senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States.

Copyright: Project Syndicate

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German magazine giant Bauer Media Group yesterday closed its New Zealand titles due to the coronavirus, sparking criticism from New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern after the government offered the company financial help.

The move will cost 237 jobs and spell the end of prestigious current affairs titles such as the New Zealand Listener and North & South, as well as best-sellers including Women’s Day.

While Bauer cited the “severe economic impact” of the pandemic as the reason for the closures, Ardern’s comments suggested that the publisher was intent on closing anyway in a media market that was already struggling before the virus.

“In my view this appears to have been a decision that has been made at the same time as COVID-19, but not because of it,” Ardern told reporters.

She said the government had pleaded with Bauer to take advantage of a government wage subsidy to tide the business over during the crisis, which has hit media advertising revenues, but the publisher refused.

“I’m extraordinarily disappointed and frankly gutted to see what has been a part of New Zealand history close its doors fairly abruptly today,” she said.

Another major publisher, NZME, this week closed its Radio Sport station and rumors abound that cuts are imminent among other major media players in the nation.

It is an issue being felt across the region, with Australia’s national newswire AAP due to close later this year, and Rupert Murdoch’s Australian flagship media group News Corp on Wednesday announced it would stop printing about 60 regional newspapers, as the troubled sector received a fresh blow from a COVID-19 advertising downturn.

News Corp said papers in the states of New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland and South Australia would cease printing and move online.

“We have not taken this decision lightly,” News Corp Australasia executive chairman Michael Miller was quoted as saying by the group’s Australian newspaper title.

“The coronavirus crisis has created unprecedented economic pressures and we are doing everything we can to preserve as many jobs as possible,” he said.

“The suspension of our community print editions has been forced on us by the rapid decline in advertising revenues following the restrictions placed on real estate auctions and home inspections, the forced closure of event venues and dine-in restaurants in the wake of the coronavirus emergency,” he added.

The move has echoed a global trend.

The largest US newspaper publisher, Gannett Co, on Monday said it was making unspecified furloughs and pay cuts for its staff.

Falling readerships and the rise of Google and Facebook Inc as dominant players in advertising have made news organizations less profitable.

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title: Bauer Media closes New Zealand titles due to virus


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McLaren furloughs staff, management to take salary cut

McLaren on Wednesday became the first Formula One team to furlough staff due to the COVID-19 pandemic, with drivers Lando Norris and Carlos Sainz joining senior management in taking a pay cut.

The automaker said in a statement that the temporary three-month wage reduction was part of wider cost-cutting measures due to the effects of the pandemic on its business.

“These measures are focused on protecting jobs in the short term to ensure our employees return to full-time work as the economy recovers,” McLaren said.

A team spokesman said that 100 to 150 staff from across the group who were working on a project to make ventilators were not included in the measure.

The group, including the luxury automaker and applied technology arm, employs about 3,700 people, with about 850 working for the F1 team.

McLaren is part of a consortium of leading aerospace, engineering and Formula One racing companies that have joined forces to ramp up production of a ventilator made by Smiths Group, which supports those with complications from the virus.

Britain has ordered 10,000 of the breathing machines.

The majority of the Formula One team, who are on a three-week factory shutdown brought forward from August due to the season being on hold, are to be furloughed from next week, with McLaren making up some of the difference.

Those not furloughed, including McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown, would work on reduced pay.

With racing unlikely to start until the European summer at the earliest, F1 sources have said that the teams — a majority based in Britain — are discussing extending the shutdown.

Formula One teams, unless owned by manufacturers, derive much of their budget from the sport’s revenues, prize money and sponsorships, and face a major financial hit if races do not happen.

They have already agreed to defer major rule changes from next year to 2022 to cut costs and to race with the same cars next season.

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Italy, Spain, France, the UK and the US are all depending on social distancing to fight COVID-19 and have fallen into terrible situations, with mounting positive cases and many deaths.

Social distancing might flatten the curve, so that the peak is not so high that hospitals are overwhelmed with patients, the problem is that the pandemic could extend further into the future, hurt the economy more and become unbearable for society.

Taiwan, South Korea, Japan and Singapore have controlled the spread of COVID-19, and the main reason is that most Asians wear masks.

It can be illustrated as follows: If someone contracts the coronavirus and wears a mask when they go out, the chance of spreading the virus would be greatly reduced to about 20 percent.

When others wear masks, their chance of catching the virus would also be about 20 percent.

The probability of transmitting the disease becomes 4 percent, even if the masks have only 80 percent efficiency.

With fewer people contracting the disease, health departments would be able to implement tracking and isolation solutions.

Unfortunately, in Western culture, people only wear masks when someone is sick, but many contracting the coronavirus show no symptoms and when they do feel sick, they do not wear a mask so that they do not attract strange looks, and also because they are not accustomed to wearing one.

The coronavirus comes from someone’s nose or mouth, and then enters someone else’s nose or mouth; therefore, masks can do a good job of blocking transmission.

Hands can also easily touch coronavirus droplets, and wearing a mask prevents people from touching their nose and mouth.

Under US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines, people should only wear masks if a health professional recommends it, but not everybody has to wear one.

The true reason is that the US does not have enough masks for people and must save them for healthcare professionals.

If masks do not provide adequate protection, why do healthcare professionals wear them?

Although many Americans want to wear a mask, they cannot buy one.

Similarly to the US, Taiwan in the past imported 90 percent of its masks from China, but in January Beijing blocked all mask exports.

Because Taiwan is not part of China, China sold masks to Hong Kong and Macau, but none to Taiwan. Taiwan immediately fell into a public health crisis.

President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) immediately used government funds to install 60 mask production lines, each capable of producing 120,000 masks per day.

With the great capabilities and devotion of the Taiwanese machinery industry, the nation was able to make the new equipment and produce masks within a very short period of time — fewer than 30 days.

With another order of 30 production lines, Taiwan can now make 15 million masks per day.

Americans can be educated or ordered to wear masks in public. It is much better than being locked down at home.

The US should order mask production lines from Taiwan or urge US companies to do so as soon as possible.

With some determination, the US can make about 150 million masks daily, and the outbreak could be taken under control and the economy saved from further deterioration.

Kenneth Wang is a founder of the Institute of Taiwanese Studies in Los Angeles.

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title: Americans need masks to ward off coronavirus


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Guinean President Alpha Conde’s party won more than two-thirds of the seats in a legislative election last month that was boycotted by the main opposition party, the Guinean Independent National Electoral Commission said on Wednesday.

The government had already declared victory in a referendum held the same day on changing the constitution, which opposition groups allege was a plot for Conde to extend his grip on power.

Conde’s Rally of the Guinean People won 79 of 114 seats in the Guinean National Assembly, the commission said.

The vote was marred by violence, with scores of polling stations ransacked and, the opposition says, dozens of people killed.

The US and EU have cast doubt on the credibility of the vote and the opposition has demanded a UN inquiry into police violence.

Conde’s proposal to change the constitution has been hugely controversial, spurring demonstrations in which at last 32 people have been killed.

The government argues that the constitution needs to be updated to usher in badly needed social changes, especially for women.

Reforms would include banning female genital mutilation and under-age marriage, and giving spouses equal rights in a divorce.

However, critics fear the reforms would also reset the presidential term, potentially enabling Conde to govern for another 12 years.

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title: Guinean president’s party wins majority in election


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Governments must take stock as capitalism faces triple crisis
We need entrepreneurial states that will invest more in innovation and know how to negotiate, so that the benefits of public investment return to the public

Capitalism is facing at least three major crises.

A pandemic-induced health crisis has rapidly ignited an economic crisis with yet unknown consequences for financial stability, and all of this is playing out against the backdrop of a climate crisis that cannot be addressed by “business as usual.”

Until just two months ago, the news media were full of frightening images of overwhelmed firefighters, not overwhelmed healthcare providers.

This triple crisis has revealed several problems with how we do capitalism, all of which must be solved at the same time that we address the immediate health emergency. Otherwise, we will simply be solving problems in one place, while creating new ones elsewhere.

That is what happened with the 2008 financial crisis. Policymakers flooded the world with liquidity without directing it toward good investment opportunities. As a result, the money ended up back in a financial sector that was (and remains) unfit for purpose.

The COVID-19 crisis is exposing still more flaws in our economic structures, not least the increasing precarious nature of work, owing to the rise of the gig economy and a decades-long deterioration of workers’ bargaining power.

Telecommuting simply is not an option for most workers, and although governments are extending some assistance to workers with regular contracts, the self-employed may find themselves left high and dry.

Worse, governments are now extending loans to businesses at a time when private debt is already historically high.

In the US, total household debt just before the current crisis was US$14.15 trillion, which is US$1.5 trillion higher than it was in 2008 (in nominal terms), and lest we forget, it was high private debt that caused the global financial crisis.

Unfortunately, over the past decade, many countries have pursued austerity, as if public debt were the problem. The result has been to erode the very public-sector institutions that we need to overcome crises like the coronavirus pandemic.

Since 2015, the UK has cut public-health budgets by ￡1 billion (US$1.24 billion), increasing the burden on doctors in training (many of whom have left the National Health Service altogether), and reducing the long-term investments needed to ensure that patients are treated in safe, up-to-date, fully-staffed facilities.

In the US — which has never had a properly funded public health system — the administration of US President Donald Trump has been persistently trying to cut funding and capacity for the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, among other critical institutions.

On top of these self-inflicted wounds, an overly “financialized” business sector has been siphoning value out of the economy by rewarding shareholders through share-buyback schemes, rather than shoring up long-term growth by investing in research and development, wages and worker training. As a result, households have been depleted of financial cushions, making it harder to afford basic goods like housing and education.

The bad news is that the COVID-19 crisis is exacerbating all these problems. The good news is that we can use the current state of emergency to start building a more inclusive and sustainable economy.

The point is not to delay or block government support, but to structure it properly. We must avoid the mistakes of the post-2008 era, when bailouts allowed corporations to reap even higher profits once the crisis was over, but failed to lay the foundation for a robust and inclusive recovery.

This time, rescue measures absolutely must come with conditions attached. Now that the state is back to playing a leading role, it must be cast as the hero rather than as a naive patsy. That means delivering immediate solutions, but designing them in such a way as to serve the public interest over the long term.

For example, conditions can be put in place for government support to businesses. Firms receiving bailouts should be asked to retain workers, and ensure that once the crisis is over they will invest in worker training and improved working conditions.

Better still, as in Denmark, governments should be supporting businesses to continue paying wages even when workers are not working — simultaneously helping households to retain their incomes, preventing the coronavirus from spreading and making it easier for businesses to resume production once the crisis is over.

Moreover, bailouts should be designed to steer larger companies to reward value creation instead of value extraction, preventing share buybacks, and encouraging investment in sustainable growth and a reduced carbon footprint.

Having declared last year that it would embrace a stakeholder value model, this is the Washington-based Business Roundtable’s chance to back its words with action. If corporate America is still dragging its feet now, we should call its bluff.

When it comes to households, governments should look beyond loans to the possibility of debt relief, especially given current high levels of private debt. At a minimum, creditor payments should be frozen until the immediate economic crisis is resolved and direct cash injections used for those households that are in direst need.

The US should offer government guarantees to pay 80 to 100 percent of distressed companies’ wage bills, as the UK, and many EU and Asian countries have done.

It is also time to rethink public-private partnerships. Too often, these arrangements are less symbiotic than parasitic.

The effort to develop a COVID-19 vaccine could become yet another one-way relationship in which corporations reap massive profits by selling back to the public a product that was born of taxpayer-funded research.

Indeed, despite US taxpayers’ significant public investment in vaccine development, US Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar has conceded that newly developed COVID-19 treatments or vaccines might not be affordable to all Americans.

We desperately need entrepreneurial states that will invest more in innovation — from artificial intelligence to public health to renewable energy — but as this crisis reminds us, we also need states that know how to negotiate, so that the benefits of public investment return to the public.

A coronavirus has exposed major weaknesses within Western capitalist economies. Now that governments are on a war footing, we have an opportunity to fix the system. If we do not, we will stand no chance against the third major crisis — an increasingly uninhabitable planet — and all the smaller crises that will come with it in the years and decades ahead.

Mariana Mazzucato is a professor of economics of innovation and public value, and director of the University College London Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose.

Copyright: Project Syndicate

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‘EXISTENTIAL BATTLE’:
 Khalifa Haftar launched an offensive to capture the capital on April 4 last year, leading to ‘the decimation of a nation,’ an analyst said

War-shattered Libya tomorrow marks one year of its latest bloody conflict that is plunging it ever deeper into chaos.

Russia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and others have fueled the fighting in the oil-rich, but poverty-stricken North African nation where hundreds have been killed and more than 150,000 displaced.

Militias in the south of the capital, Tripoli, have been firing bullets, mortars and grenades at each other, the explosions echoing across the city.

Fighters loyal to the UN-recognized Government of National Accord on June 13 last year fire from their position in the al-Sawani area south of the Libyan capital, Tripoli, during clashes with forces loyal to Libyan National Army Commander Khalifa Haftar.
 Photo: AFP

Libya has been gripped by chaos for almost a decade, since former Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi was brought down and killed in a 2011 uprising backed by several Western powers.

It is now split between the UN-recognized Government of National Accord (GNA) in Tripoli and forces loyal to Libyan National Army Commander Khalifa Haftar, who launched an offensive to try to capture the capital on April 4 last year.

One year on, and several failed ceasefires later, “we are simply witnessing the decimation of a nation,” said analyst Jalel Harchaoui of the Clingendael Institute in The Hague, the Netherlands.

UN Ambassador to Libya Ghassan Salame threw in the towel in early last month following the repeated failure of efforts to restore order, although he said his resignation was for health reasons.

A Berlin summit in late January saw Moscow, Ankara and other foreign players engaged in Libya pledge to respect an arms embargo and support a truce, but barely 10 days later, Salame was denouncing violations and a continuous influx of foreign arms and mercenaries.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has openly sent military equipment and fighters to the GNA.

Russia, Egypt and the UAE have supported what Haftar claims is a campaign against jihadist “terrorists” and “criminals.”

As Haftar’s offensive has so far failed to take Tripoli, Erdogan’s government has been able “to increase its presence and influence in the Libyan capital,” Harchaoui said.

In the past few months, Erdogan sent hundreds of pro-Turkish Syrian fighters to battle the pro-Haftar forces, who are supported by Russian mercenaries that Moscow denies having sent.

Armed groups from western Libya are fighting Haftar forces “in an existential battle,” said Wolfram Lacher of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs. “Haftar’s forces are notorious for looting and summary executions, and they include groups that are motivated by a thirst for revenge against entire communities.”

“The fear of war crimes, of collective punishment, of marginalization under dictatorial rule means that the forces fighting against Haftar won’t give up easily,” Lacher said.

Fighting has intensified in the past few days, despite the latest pledges by both sides to accept UN and international calls for a humanitarian truce to help contain the spread of COVID-19.

The international community’s “distraction linked to COVID-19 has accelerated and exacerbated this escalation which, in any case, was inevitable,” Harchaoui said.

A few days ago, the GNA even announced a counteroffensive named “peace storm.”

Fighting is still concentrated south of Tripoli and east of the coastal city of Misrata, after pro-Haftar forces in early January captured Sirte, about 250km away.

Fears of war and disease have piled on misery for displaced people such as Fatma Khairi, who has taken refuge in a school building in the working class district of Abu Slim in the south of Tripoli.

“I have a lot of trouble with the communal toilets where often there is no water or soap,” Khairi told reporters. “My family and I live in dramatic conditions that I can hardly describe to you. The situation has become unbearable.”

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title: Libya marks a year of fighting in latest turmoil


references: Facebook Twitter

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Virus Outbreak: New Zealand embraces teddy bears in a bid to make its lockdown ‘bearable’

Teddy bears are popping up in the unlikeliest of places as New Zealanders embrace an international movement in which people in lockdown are placing the stuffed animals in their windows to brighten the mood and give children the game of spotting bears in their neighborhoods.

The inspiration comes from the children’s book We’re Going on a Bear Hunt, written by Michael Rosen and illustrated by Helen Oxenbury.

New Zealand last week began a four-week lockdown, but people are still allowed outside to exercise if they keep a safe distance from each other. In other words, bear-spotting is permitted.

Deb Hoffman, part-time school administrator and mother of two, started a Facebook page called “We’re Not Scared — NZ Bear Hunt” and also set up a Web site with an online map, on which more than 120,000 people have placed pins to show the location of their bears.

“We’re not scared” is a repeated line in the book, which features a family overcoming a number of obstacles in their search for a bear.

Hoffman said that she has been taken aback by the huge response, adding that some people are creating personalities for their bears by having them do a different activity each day.

One woman, who had been housebound for six weeks following surgery before the lockdown began, wrote that the teddy bears were the only thing getting her through the isolation, Hoffman said.

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has even joined in, saying that people should keep an eye on her window because they might spot a bear.

In recent weeks, the 73-year-old author has wondered on Twitter whether symptoms including fatigue and fever meant that he had COVID-19 or a “heavy flu.”

Rosen’s family on Tuesday said that he was doing “poorly,” but improving, having previously spent a night in intensive care.

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title: Brady, Manning to join Woods, Mickelson

content_text:
Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson are planning to play a charity golf match next month with Super Bowl-winning quarterbacks Tom Brady and Peyton Manning, CNBC reported on Wednesday.

CNBC, which cited an unnamed person familiar with the negotiations, said that the charity match would be held at an undisclosed location without fans and is being organized by the PGA Tour and AT&T’s WarnerMedia.

The negotiations are still being finalized, but the match pitting 15-time major champion Woods and Manning against five-time major winner Mickelson and Brady could be aired on live TV and is unlikely to be featured on pay-per-view, CNBC said.

“Discussions along these lines have been ongoing for quite some time, but nothing has been approved by the tour,” the PGA Tour said in a statement.

A matchup featuring two of the most famous golfers of their era and two of the all-time greatest NFL quarterbacks would be a rare sporting event during the COVID-19 pandemic, which has brought the sporting world to a halt.

The event would feature a small production crew to film it and each individual would obey “social distancing” recommendations to stay at least 1.8m apart, CNBC said.

Mickelson was asked recently on Twitter about the chances of a round of golf against Woods being livestreamed in the near future, with the American saying: “Working on it.”

When another fan tweeted to Mickelson asking him not to “tease,” the 49-year-old said: “I don’t tease. I’m kinda a sure thing.”

Woods, 44, last competed in mid-February and then withdrew from a number of tournaments with a back injury before the PGA Tour decided to cancel a slew of events because of the pandemic.

Mickelson finished third in the Pebble Beach Pro-Am in early February and missed the cut in his next two starts.

Woods and Mickelson played each other in a winner-takes-all US$9 million match play exhibition in November 2018 that was golf’s first venture into pay-per-view.

That event was hyped like a Las Vegas prize fight, but proved more of a pillow fight, with both golfers in a jovial mood, playing for a purse that was put up by sponsors and went to a charity of Mickelson’s choice.

Brady last month joined the Tampa Bay Buccaneers after 20 years with the New England Patriots, during which he won an NFL-record six Super Bowl titles.

Manning, who played for the Indianapolis Colts and Denver Broncos, retired in 2016 as the NFL’s all-time leader in passing touchdowns and yards, and is the only five-time winner of the league’s Most Valuable Player award.

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content_text:
An Australian graduate student arrested for spying and expelled from North Korea last year said that he was threatened with a firing-squad execution and told not even US President Donald Trump could save his “sorry arse.”

Among the crimes Alek Sigley was accused of committing was posting a picture of a toy tank on Instagram, which his interrogators told him was military espionage.

Sigley, 30, was studying for a master’s degree in Korean literature at Kim Il Sung University in Pyongyang when he went missing in June last year, sparking alarm.

A fluent speaker of Korean, he had written articles for several publications and posted apolitical content on social media about everyday life in one of the world’s most secretive nations.

He was detained at the university and taken to an interrogation facility in a Mercedes-Benz with a black plastic bag covering its license plate.

A North Korean man “with a crazed expression and bulging, bloodshot eyes” began screaming at him, Sigley wrote in a column published by the Guardian on Wednesday.

“You son of a bitch,” he was told in an expletive-laden rant.

“Coming into our country and committing all these crimes. You think Trump or [US Secretary of State Mike] Pompeo will save your sorry arse?” Sigley recalled him saying.

Sigley was interrogated “in a room completely cut off from the outside world,” with no sense of time as the lights were kept on permanently and there was no clock.

“Every day was spent writing forced confessions of my ‘crimes,’ which became only more fanciful as time went on,” Sigley wrote.

If he denied the allegations,” they began yelling at me, reminding me that I could face execution by firing squad if I didn’t carry out my ‘reflection’ and do it ‘sincerely,’” he wrote.

One of his offenses, he was told, was posting on Instagram a picture of a toy North Korean tank inscribed with the slogan “Let’s exterminate US imperialists, the eternal enemy of the Korean people.”

“That’s military espionage,” the interrogator said.

Australia has no diplomatic representation in Pyongyang and when Sigley was detained Canberra turned to Sweden, which has an embassy and a history of acting as a diplomatic intermediary.

Stockholm sent an envoy and Sigley was released after nine days in detention — a much shorter period than some foreigners — with Pyongyang saying he was freed on grounds of “humanitarian forbearance.”

Sigley was forced to read out a “letter of apology” video dictated by his captors before being released, he wrote.

Sigley was already familiar with North Korea, organizing tours to the nation and marrying his Japanese wife there in 2018.

“North Korea is one of the world’s most xenophobic societies, but this xenophobia comes from the state, not the people,” he wrote.

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title: Student recalls N Korea nightmare


title: Lewis of cricket’s ‘D/L’ method fame dies at 78

content_text:
Tony Lewis, one of the men behind the Duckworth-Lewis-Stern method used in weather-affected limited-overs cricket matches, has died at age 78, the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) announced on Wednesday.

“It is with much sadness that the ECB has learned of the passing of Tony Lewis MBE, aged 78,” it said in a statement.

“Tony, alongside fellow mathematician Frank Duckworth, devised the Duckworth-Lewis method, which was introduced in 1997 and adopted officially by the ICC [International Cricket Council] in 1999,” it said.

“Renamed the Duckworth-Lewis-Stern Method in 2014, the mathematical formula continues to be used in rain-reduced limited-overs cricket games across the globe,” it added.

A career academic — and not the Welshman of the same name who captained England — Lewis was in 2010 made a Member of the Order of the British Empire for his services to cricket and mathematics.

“Cricket is deeply indebted to both Tony and Frank’s contributions to the sport,” the ECB said. “We send our sincere condolences to Tony’s family.”

The formula came about in response to the extraordinary climax of a rain-interrupted 1992 Cricket World Cup semi-final in Sydney.

The method then in use removed the lowest-scoring overs from each team’s innings.

However, it produced a farcical finish to a showpiece semi-final when South Africa, who had faced the challenging but achievable target of 22 runs off 13 balls to beat England, were left with the impossible task of scoring 21 runs off one ball after a rain delay.

Duckworth, the more outspoken of the founding duo — fellow statistician Steven Stern helped revise the formula several years later — said: “I recall hearing [commentator] Christopher Martin-Jenkins on radio saying: ‘Surely someone, somewhere could come up with something better’ and I soon realized that it was a mathematical problem that required a mathematical solution.”

The big difference between Duckworth-Lewis and previous methods is that it gives credit to sides defending a target for taking wickets, as well as chasing sides for scoring runs. Significantly, this means that the target can be adjusted proportionately in the event of more than one stoppage.

An enduring criticism of the system is that it is difficult to understand without having access to a chart that shows where teams need to be over by over, for however many wickets they have lost.

However, the sight of a “D/L” target soon became a familiar feature on cricket scoreboards worldwide.

However, several sides have still confused the target needed to tie with the total they require to win, with cohosts South Africa being knocked out of the 2003 Cricket World Cup when they made this mistake against Sri Lanka in Durban.

The formula has also been criticized for not being suited to Twenty20 matches, cricket’s shortest format, which came into being after Duckworth-Lewis was established.

However, no alternative method has yet found favor with the ICC.

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content_text:
APPROVED:
 China’s National Health Commission last month issued guidelines recommending the use of an injection that includes bile powder to treat COVID-19

China has approved the use of bear bile to treat COVID-19 patients, angering animal rights advocates and raising fears that it could undermine efforts to stop the illegal animal trade, which is blamed for the emergence of the pandemic.

The move comes just weeks after Beijing banned the sale of wild animals for food — citing the risk of diseases spreading from animals to humans — but China’s National Health Commission last month issued guidelines recommending the use of tan re qing — an injection that contains bear bile powder, goat horn and other ingredients — to treat COVID-19 patients.

The virus is believed to have come from bats, but researchers think that it might have spread to humans via a mammal that served as an intermediate host.

The Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention previously identified wild animals sold by a vendor at Huanan Seafood City in Wuhan as COVID-19’s source.

Conservationists have long accused China of tolerating a cruel trade in wild animals as exotic menu items or for use in traditional medicines.

About 20,000 bears are being held in cages across China to meet demand from traditional medicine suppliers, World Animal Protection spokeswoman Kirsty Warren said.

Bile farming is legal in China, but exports of bile or treatments made from it are banned under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, of which China is a signatory.

“Across Asia, bear bile trade is widespread, although it is illegal in most countries,” Richard Thomas of animal rights non-governmental organization Traffic. “The active ingredient in bear bile, ursodeoxycholic acid, is readily synthesized in laboratories — so even if it did prove to be popular, there should be no need for bear bile to be included [in medicines].”

Beijing implemented a similar ban on the trade and consumption of wild animals following the 2003 SARS outbreak, but the practices made a comeback.

However, in a sign that the measures are being taken more seriously this time, Shenzhen also passed a law this week banning the consumption of wild animals — including cat and dog meat.

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title: Virus Outbreak: Bear bile as virus treatment decried


content_text:
A young Chinese diplomat rises as aggressive foreign policy takes root
More traditional diplomats have sought to distance themselves from the new tactics, wary of putting China on a collision course with the US

Diplomats returning from overseas postings do not usually receive special attention at the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, a vast government bureaucracy with thousands of staff, but when Zhao Lijian (趙立堅), a diplomat known for his pugnacious social media presence, finished a posting in Pakistan in August last year, he received an enthusiastic welcome in Beijing.

A group of young admirers at the ministry gathered at his office to cheer his return, two people familiar with the matter said.

That admiration was fueled in part by a Twitter spat he had engaged in a month earlier with Susan Rice, who was national security adviser to former US president Barack Obama. Each accused the other of being “ignorant” and a “disgrace.”

Now a ministry spokesman, Zhao has come to represent a new generation of diplomatic hawks in China, challenging the restraint that long characterized the country’s engagement with the world, said a dozen current and former ministry officials and government researchers who spoke with Reuters.

Their emergence has caused a rift with the old foreign policy establishment, amid worries that increasingly assertive rhetoric could put the country on a dangerous collision course with powers like the US, they said.

The shift followed instructions that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) issued diplomats in a memo last year, calling on them to show more “fighting spirit,” two people with direct knowledge of the matter said.

“This is the first time since 1949 that the ‘new hawks’ have the power to reshape China’s diplomatic policy,” said Qin Xiaoying (秦曉鷹), a former director of the Chinese Communist Party international propaganda department and a researcher at the China Foundation for International and Strategic Studies in Beijing.

Driving the shift is the widespread feeling among many Chinese that the US wants to contain the nation’s rise. Aggressive pushback by diplomats on issues that provoke nationalistic sentiment, like the protests in Hong Kong or the COVID-19 outbreak, has proven popular domestically.

Most people who spoke with reporters for this article declined to be named given the sensitivity of the matter.

In response to a request for comment, the ministry said that Chinese diplomats from all age groups are determined to “resolutely safeguard” national sovereignty and security.

“We will not attack unless we are attacked,” the ministry said, citing a slogan from former Chinese leader Mao Zedong (毛澤東). “But if we are attacked, we will certainly counterattack.”

Zhao, 47, did not respond to requests for comment.

A spokeswoman for Rice said that she would not be available for comment. The US Department of State did not respond to a request for comment.

Xi gave his instructions about adopting a tougher stance in the face of international challenges, like deteriorating relations with the US, in a handwritten message to diplomats last year, two people with direct knowledge of the matter said.

Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) gave the same message to officials attending the celebration of the 70th anniversary of the ministry’s founding, Reuters reported in December last year.

Over the past year, more than 60 Chinese diplomats and diplomatic missions set up Twitter or Facebook accounts, even though both platforms are banned in China, often using them to attack Beijing’s critics around the world.

Zhao last month promoted a conspiracy theory on his personal Twitter account that the US Army had taken COVID-19 to Wuhan, the Chinese city where the pandemic began last year.

US President Donald Trump escalated the spat, infuriating Beijing by repeatedly citing the “Chinese virus.”

The new Chinese assertiveness is a response in part to Washington’s more confrontational stance toward China under Trump, Chinese diplomats said.

“Why can the Americans criticize us constantly and we can’t scold the US? Nobody likes to be educated all the time,” said a diplomat who helped one embassy set up its Twitter account.

Among China’s new Twitter warriors is Zhao’s boss, Hua Chunying (華春瑩), who became the ministry’s top spokeswoman last year and began tweeting last month.

A rising star, Hua spent several weeks last year at the Central Party School, which trains officials destined for promotion.

The Twitter aggression is aimed not only at Washington.

Chinese Ambassador to Brazil Yang Wanming (楊萬明) shared a tweet, later deleted, calling the family of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro “poison” after his son blamed the “Chinese dictatorship” for the pandemic.

The Chinese embassy in Peru criticized Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa for “irresponsible” comments after the 83-year-old said the coronavirus pandemic had “originated in China.”

While the Chinese embassy in Singapore went after former Singaporean Ministry of Foreign Affairs permanent secretary Bilahari Kausikan, after he linked the coronavirus outbreak and China’s political system. The article was “smearing China’s political system and the leadership system,” it said.

“These diplomats are not engaging the world with diplomatic language, but they are trying to please the domestic audience,” Qin said. “This is not diplomacy. This is very dangerous.”

Many young diplomats have pushed the Chinese government to take a harder line when dealing with the US, diplomats said.

Last month, the foreign ministry made an unprecedented move by expelling about a dozen journalists at US newspapers.

Some more traditional diplomats have sought to distance themselves from the new tactics, wary of putting China on a collision course with the US.

Chinese Ambassador to the US Cui Tiankai (崔天凱), a ministry spokesman in the 1990s, said in an interview with Axios on HBO that it would be “crazy” to spread theories about a possible US origin for the coronavirus.

“There is definitely a generational divide,” said Douglas Paal, a former director of the American Institute in Taiwan who served on the US National Security Council under former US presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.

Cui “was and is in the tradition of ‘just the facts,’” Paal said.

Some retired diplomats and researchers at state think tanks, wary of provoking anti-China sentiment globally, have been writing cautionary internal reports, the researchers said.

Some cite the pragmatism of first Chinese minister of foreign affairs Zhou Enlai (周恩來), who sought to make as many friends as possible for the country and avoid making enemies.

Zhou’s spirit of diplomacy was largely adopted by former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平), whose policy of “biding our time and nurturing our strength” enabled China to keep a low profile internationally while focusing on economic growth.

“The young diplomats are taking control of strategy and want it to be more pugnacious to win domestic public opinion,” said a veteran government researcher who wrote one of the reports.

The younger generation only know a rising China and think this is a law of nature, Kausikan said.

“It sometimes seems as if this new generation feels obliged to have a public quarrel to prove their patriotism,” he said.

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references: Twitter Facebook


content_text:
Virus Outbreak: Biden offers to call Trump with advice on COVID-19

US Democratic presidential front-runner Joe Biden’s campaign on Wednesday said it would be in touch with the White House to set up a call for the former US vice president to offer his ideas on combating COVID-19 to US President Donald Trump after a top White House official said that the administration had not heard any suggestions from Biden.

A day of back and forth between the president and his likely general election opponent culminated in Trump saying during a press briefing that he would “absolutely” take Biden’s call.

“Oh absolutely, I’d love to speak with him,” Trump said. “I think he’s probably a nice guy.”

A mural painted on a fence depicts US President Donald Trump as the coronavirus in San Francisco, California, on Wednesday.
 Photo: AFP

Biden deputy campaign manager Kate Bedingfield responded that “our teams will be in touch and we will arrange a call.”

Earlier in the day, White House counselor Kellyanne Conway said on Fox News that she had not heard anything from Biden about his plans to fight coronavirus.

“Why doesn’t [former] vice president Biden call the White House today and offer some support? He’s in his bunker in Wilmington,” she said, referring to the makeshift television studio Biden’s campaign rushed to build in his Delaware home.

In response, the Biden campaign said the candidate was prepared to make the call.

“Vice president Biden has been extending his advice for months, and he did so again on the air last night,” Bedingfield said in a statement responding to Conway.

Appearing on MSNBC on Tuesday night, Biden spoke about what he described as Trump’s “responsibility” to do more, including to ramp up the use of the Defense Production Act.

He also said it would be “wise” for Trump to speak with former US president Barack Obama, whose administration oversaw the response to the 2014 ebola outbreak.

However, Biden said he did not think Trump wanted advice.

“I don’t get a sense that the president wants to hear from anybody. It’s all about, like, asking governors to thank him for what he’s doing as president? Come on. What is this all about?” Biden said.

Conway said the criticism was “disappointing” to hear.

“I think the critics and the naysayers seem so much more small and so much more small and unhelpful and petty than they ever have,” she said.

Biden has given a series of speeches and TV interviews in which he called Trump’s virus response insufficient and urged him to take more drastic steps, such as ordering companies to manufacture much-needed medical equipment.

The former vice president has also released a response plan that calls for free testing and expanded emergency family leave, among other steps.

“Donald Trump is not accountable for coronavirus itself — but he is accountable for the federal government’s slow and chaotic response to this outbreak,” Bedingfield said. “Unfortunately, Trump spent months after the virus was discovered disregarding repeated warnings from his scientific and intelligence experts, and downplaying the threat of this outbreak to the American people. He could have heeded [former] vice president Biden’s public advice not to take China’s word as they misled the world about their efforts to stop the spread.”

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content_text:
PHILIPPINES

Shooting orders given

President Rodrigo Duterte gave authorities the green light to shoot dead protesters who attempt to riot or disrupt food distribution during a lockdown prompted by the COVID-19 outbreak. “My orders to the police, the military and the village officials: if there’s a commotion, if they fight back and your life becomes at risk, shoot them dead,” Duterte said in a televised address on Wednesday. He also warned groups against causing food riots. However, police are not going to shoot people dead, and they understand that Duterte “just overemphasized” following the law during a crisis, police chief General Archie Gamboa told ABS-CBN News Channel yesterday. The Department of Health yesterday announced 11 deaths and 322 new cases from the outbreak. That brings the total death toll to 107 and infections to 2,633, Department of Health Secretary Francisco Duque told a news conference.

INDIA

Faked death dodge fails

A Kashmiri villager faked his death and traveled more than 106km in an ambulance with four others in a desperate bid to circumvent the nation’s COVID-19 lockdown and return home, police said on Wednesday. Hakim Din was being treated for a minor head injury at a hospital in Jammu when an ambulance driver suggested that the 70-year-old fake his death to get past checkpoints, police said. Din and three other men wanted to return to Poonch, close to the de facto border with Pakistan. Poonch Superintendent of Police Ramesh Angral said that the four men and the driver passed many checkpoints using a fake death certificate from the hospital. “The ambulance was stopped at the last checkpoint before they could reach home,” Angral said. “A policeman there immediately figured out that the man lying covered inside the ambulance could not be dead.” The men were arrested and quarantined separately, Angral said, adding that they faced charges of “cheating and defying the government’s prohibitory orders.” The government imposed a 21-day nationwide lockdown on Wednesday last week.

NEW ZEALAND

Virus testing tent stolen

Thieves who stole a COVID-19 testing tent outside an Auckland hospital have put themselves at risk of contracting the virus and should get tested, police said. The tent had been set up to test people for COVID-19, police said in a video posted on Facebook on Tuesday. East Health Trust head Loretta Hansen said that staff discovered the tent was missing when they arrived on Tuesday morning to begin a day of testing. “Some fool, idiot, come and stole our tent — our COVID-19 testing tent,” she said in the video. “They chopped it off at the ground level. It was bolted in by concrete, and they just chopped it off.” Counties Manukau police sergeant Brett Meale appealed for the thieves to return the tent and submit themselves to testing for the virus, which is thought to survive on surfaces for several days. “If you have got that tent, or you know where it is, we’re quite happy if you could just let us know anonymously where we can pick it up from. You might save yourself a bit of trouble, but if you have been in contact with that tent, I’d suggest you get yourself along here and get yourself tested for COVID-19,” Meale said. Clinic staff had to “race round” to replace the tent, which they managed, Hansen said. “We’re back up and running. We certainly don’t want to be out of action.”

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title: World News Quick Take


content_text:
In North America and much of Europe, liquor stores remain open, and busy — often protected under the same regulations that allow business such as supermarkets or pharmacies to operate

Some countries have banned alcohol, others say liquor shops are essential services, and one top official even suggested a tipple after another long day trapped at home can be a necessary restorative.

The debate around alcohol and the coronavirus pandemic touches on issues of health, the economy, worker safety — and whether for some a glass of wine may indeed help cope with the stress of seeing their lives upended in the space of weeks.

Police in South Africa are brutally enforcing a ban on all alcohol sales during the shutdown.

South Africans on March 26 wait in line to enter a Liquor store in Cape Town, South Africa, 26 March 2020.
 Photo: EPA-EFE

But in North America and much of Europe, alcohol stores remain open, and busy — often protected under the same regulations that allow business such as supermarkets or pharmacies to operate.

In Canada — where legal cannabis stores have also stayed open — Quebec’s premier Francois Legault justified the decision to keep alcohol sales flowing, a move welcomed by consumers but criticized by a trade union concerned for shop workers.

“To reduce the stress, you have to do some exercise, so have a walk — but sometimes a glass of wine may help,” he said.

Unlike much of the world Canadians are not under official lockdown, but they have been urged to stay home and practice social distancing — and that has been enough to send alcohol sales soaring.

“Everyone feels like it is Friday or Saturday all the time,” said Catherine Paradis, an analyst at the Canadian Center on Addictions and Substance Use.

Consumers are hitting stores like “in the weeks before Christmas” as well as buying at peak levels online, according to a spokesman for the Societe des alcools du Quebec (SAQ) — a government corporation which last year reported net earnings of CAN$1.146 billion.

Nationwide, Paradis notes that closing stores selling alcohol would cut off a significant source of government revenue — estimated at about US$288 annually per person.

SAUNA, THEN VODKA?

On the other side of the border, New York, the epicenter of the epidemic in the US, has also placed wine and spirits stores on the list of “essential” businesses.

The New York State Liquor Stores Association confirms that sales have increased significantly.

“In a way, we are helping the economy,” president Stefan Kalogridis said.

Experts also note that for people who are addicted, the side effects of abrupt alcohol withdrawal can include tremors, insomnia and nausea.

This “could have serious complications, especially if the person is confined to their home, it is very, very dangerous,” says Anne-Elizabeth Lapointe, director of the Addiction Prevention Center in Montreal.

But even for the majority of moderate alcohol consumers, closing liquor stores could lead to increased anxiety and stress.

Since the start of the epidemic, alcohol has served other purposes too.

In France, where wine merchants remain open, Pernod Ricard and Bacardi were also among the first beverage giants to convert part of their production into alcohol-based hand sanitizer gel.

In Poland meanwhile, almost half a million liters of contraband vodka and illegally-produced pure alcohol have been used as a disinfectant instead of being destroyed.

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has even recommended drinking a 100-ml glass of vodka after going to the sauna — as a spurious miracle remedy for coronavirus.

At the other end of the spectrum Hong Kong executive Carrie Lam (林鄭月娥) has banned all restaurants and bars from serving alcohol — arguing that easy access could harm social distancing.

“Sometimes people get a bit intimate when they are drunk, and this will raise the risk of infection,” she said.

A perhaps more serious risk linked to excessive alcohol consumption, points out addiction specialist Paradis, is domestic violence under the lockdown and mounting stress.

To limit the risk, Greenland has temporarily banned sales in its capital Nuuk.

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title: How ‘essential’ is booze?


content_text:
‘GARBAGE PROPAGANDA’:
 A US intelligence report described China’s infection and death numbers as fake, misleading the global community, US lawmakers said

The US has accused China of lying about the extent of its COVID-19 outbreak, US lawmakers said on Wednesday, citing an intelligence report presented to the White House.

Republican lawmakers, pointing to a report by Bloomberg citing US intelligence officials, expressed outrage that Beijing apparently misled the international community on China’s infections and deaths, which began late last year in the city of Wuhan.

China’s reporting has been intentionally incomplete, with some intelligence officials describing Beijing’s numbers as fake, said the Bloomberg report, which highlighted the classified intelligence document sent last week to the White House.

A pro-democracy activist, center, from HK Alliance holds a placard of missing Chinese citizen journalist Fang Bin, as she protests on Feb. 19 outside the Chinese liaison office in Hong Kong against Beijing’s detention of anti-corruption activist Xu Zhiyong.
 Photo: AFP

China had publicly reported 82,361 confirmed cases and 3,316 deaths as of Wednesday, according to a rolling tracker by Johns Hopkins University.

That compared with 206,207 cases and 4,542 deaths in the US, the country with the world’s largest reported outbreak.

US Senator Ben Sasse attacked Beijing’s numbers as “garbage propaganda.”

“The claim that the United States has more coronavirus deaths than China is false,” Sasse said in a statement. “Without commenting on any classified information, this much is painfully obvious: The Chinese Communist Party has lied, is lying and will continue to lie about coronavirus to protect the regime.”

In a statement responding to the report, US Representative Michael McCaul, top Republican on the US House of Representatives’ Committee on Foreign Affairs, said China is “not a trustworthy partner” in the fight against COVID-19.

“They lied to the world about the human-to-human transmission of the virus, silenced doctors and journalists who tried to report the truth, and are now apparently hiding the accurate number of people impacted by this disease,” McCaul said.

He and other lawmakers have called on the US Department of State to launch an investigation into what he called China’s “cover-up” about the pandemic.

US President Donald Trump in recent weeks has accused Beijing of not fully sharing data sooner about the virus outbreak once it started in China.

“The world is paying a very big price for what they did,” Trump said on March 19.

On Tuesday, White House coronavirus response coordinator Deborah Birx said the medical community saw China’s outbreak as “serious, but smaller than anyone expected because I think probably we were missing a significant amount of the data.”

In related news, a US lawmaker is calling on the State Department to urge China to investigate the disappearance of three Chinese citizen journalists who sought to expose the impact of the coronavirus on Wuhan.

US Representative Jim Banks asked the US government to seek a probe into the fates of Fang Bin (方斌), Chen Qiushi (陳秋實) and Li Zehua (李澤華).

According to media reports, they went missing after taking videos and publishing them online, including images of overwhelmed hospitals and corpses piled in a minibus.

“All three of these men understood the personal risk associated with independently reporting on coronavirus in China, but they did it anyway,” Banks wrote, alleging that the Chinese government “imprisoned them — or worse.”

The State Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Hua Chunying (華春瑩) yesterday said she did not quite understand the accusation about the three individuals and that China has acted in an “open and transparent” manner throughout the virus crisis.

“I am so curious why these lawmakers are focusing on matters of other countries when the US is facing such a pandemic. And what they said is totally based on trumped up messages and information,” Hua said at a daily press briefing in Beijing.

“They had better use their time to do something concrete for their people, save their lives, protect their safety,” she added.

Additional reporting by Reuters

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title: Virus Outbreak: China hid outbreak extent: lawmakers


content_text:
Virus Outbreak: Serbia sets the stage for Beijing’s diplomacy

When six Chinese doctors landed in Belgrade two weeks ago, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic greeted them with elbow-bumps before laying a kiss on their nation’s flag, a gesture of gratitude that sent social media in China aflutter.

These doctors are now running the Balkan state’s COVID-19 strategy, as Serbia becomes a willing theater for Beijing’s “mask diplomacy.”

For weeks China has been showering European countries with millions of masks, test kits and other aid, recasting itself as the hero in the battle against the novel coronavirus, which emerged in Wuhan, China.

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, left, greets Chinese doctors at Belgrade Airport on March 21.
 Photo: AFP / Dimitrije Goll / Serbia’s Presidential press service

EU officials have started to warn against a Beijing propaganda campaign — spun through the “politics of generosity” — that is distorting China’s initial missteps in managing a contagion that started on its soil and has now killed more than 47,280 people around the globe.

However, Serbia, an EU candidate country with a long history of balancing its Western and Eastern alliances, has never been so lavish in its praise.

“Chinese experts are the first to have defeated the virus. From now on, we will do everything they say,” Vucic said as state TV broadcast the arrival of the plane carrying the doctors and equipment.

Since then, the Chinese team has helped redraw the country’s approach to containing COVID-19, which has killed more than 28 Serbians and infected nearly 1,060.

Plans to use a military hospital as a hub for patients were scrapped after the Chinese experts said the site’s ventilation was unsuitable, officials told media.

The doctors were also behind the decision to ramp up testing — with a goal of 7,000 daily this month — and set up enormous field hospitals across the nation to house people with mild symptoms.

“It was agreed that from the moment of their arrival our experts will consult with Chinese experts on all future decisions,” Serbian Prime Minister Ana Brnabic said.

In the center of Belgrade, Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) face now peers out from a billboard with the words: “Thank you brother Xi,” a message paid for by a pro-Serbian government tabloid.

The adulation is playing out against a backdrop in which the government has framed the EU as absent and ineffective.

Vucic initially downplayed the threat of the respiratory disease.

At a news conference he joked that it could be treated with rakija, a strong Balkan brandy.

However, when the dangers became undeniable, Vucic pivoted to criticizing a lack of help from the EU.

“The best way to insulate himself from criticism for his previous mishandling of the crisis is to launch attacks on the EU and hold pompous ceremonies at the airport welcoming Chinese doctors and medical deliveries,” said Majda Ruge, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations. “The imagery is very powerful.”

The fanfare is welcomed by Beijing, eager to paper over its slow response in managing the outbreak.

Footage of Vucic kissing the flag was widely aired in China and won him an army of Chinese online fans, the Global Times reported.

Web users applauded “his sincerity, gratitude, as well as attractive looking and tall figure,” the state-run paper said.

EU officials have since raced to highlight their already significant investments in Serbia’s healthcare — more than 450 million euros (US$492 million) in aid and loans over the past 20 years.

They also unveiled a fresh 93.4 million euro donation package to battle COVID-19 directly.

The exact quantities of China’s help have not been made public.

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A: It’s only day three of the quarantine, but I’m already getting cabin fever. Do you think it would be OK to take a bit of exercise in the park?

B: No way! If we go outside, we’ll be putting others at risk.

A: Even if we keep our distance?

B: I just think we shouldn’t take the risk. We have to stay inside to protect the elderly and vulnerable people.

A: 今天才是隔離的第三天，我已經感覺有幽閉恐懼症了。你覺得去外面公園運動一下可以嗎？

B: 不行！如果我們出門，就會陷其他人於感染的風險中。

A: 就算我們保持距離也不行嗎？

B: 我只是覺得我們不應該冒這個險。我們必須留在家裡，才能保護老年人和身體虛弱的人。

English 英文:

Chinese 中文:

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title: EVERYDAY ENGLISH


content_text:
A Pakistani court has commuted the death sentences of the main person accused in the 2002 kidnapping and murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, and acquitted three others accused in the matter, two lawyers said yesterday.

At least four people were convicted in connection with Pearl’s murder, including Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, who was sentenced to death in 2002 for masterminding the murder.

He has been in jail for 18 years awaiting the outcome of an appeal.

“The court has commuted Omar’s death sentence to a seven-year sentence,” defense lawyer Khawaja Naveed said by telephone. “The murder charges were not proven, so he has been given seven years for the kidnapping.”

“Omar has already served 18 years, so his release orders will be issued sometime today. He will be out in a few days,” Naveed said.

A two-member bench of the High Court of Sindh issued the order in Karachi, Naveed said, adding that the three others, who had been serving life sentences in connection with the case, had been acquitted.

Pearl was investigating militants in Karachi after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks on the US when he was kidnapped in January 2002.

Video emerged a few weeks later of his murder.

A Sindh prosecutor said he would consider appealing the decision.

“We will go through the court order once it is issued, we will probably file an appeal,” Sindh Provincial Prosecutor-General Faiz Shah said by telephone.

Sheikh, who was born in Britain and studied at the London School of Economics and Political Science, was arrested in India for his involvement in the kidnapping of Western tourists in 1994.

He was one of three men released from an Indian prison after militants hijacked an Indian airliner in late 1999 and flew it to Afghanistan, where the then-Taliban regime helped negotiate an exchange.

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title: Court commutes death sentence in Daniel Pearl case


title: Virus Outbreak: DJs livestream ‘social disdance’ beats

content_text:
Strobe lights flash across a near-empty dance floor, as a DJ livestreams thumping electronic music from a Singapore nightclub to revelers confined to their homes due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The pandemic has shuttered once lively nightspots from London to New York, but innovative DJs have started putting their performances online so that clubbers do not miss out.

The trend is another example of how the virus, which has left about 3.6 billion people stuck at home under lockdowns, is upending daily life in ways unthinkable until recently, as governments impose social-distancing curbs to stem its spread.

DJ Farah Farz, center, performs in front of a video camera at Singapore’s Zouk nightclub during a “cloud clubbing” party that was livestreamed on Friday last week following the city-state’s entertainment venues being shuttered due to a rise in COVID-19 cases.
 Photo: AFP

After Singapore last week ordered the closure of many entertainment venues following a steady rise in infections, popular nightclub Zouk threw a “cloud clubbing” party, streaming live performances by six DJs via an app.

It took place on a Friday night when the club is often packed with hundreds of partygoers — but only a handful of people were allowed to attend, most of them staff members.

DJ Nash D conceded that he found it weird at first.

“When you play for a dance floor with a room full of people, you can feel the energy come back, and I like to DJ off that energy,” the DJ said.

However, he quickly got used to it, saying that live comments from clubbers on his laptop were helpful.

“Whatever song requests that they had actually guided me in a certain direction,” he added.

Clubbers also used the livestreaming app Bigo Live send the DJs gifts, such as bells and snowflakes, that could later be exchanged for cash.

The nightclub partnered with gaming equipment company Razer and Bigo Live, and attracted 200,000 views of the three-hour event, with 5,600 viewers at one point.

In China, DJs and nightspots started livestreaming performances at the beginning of February, when the country’s outbreak was at its pinnacle.

Shanghai and Beijing venues pioneered livestreamed clubbing on Douyin, China’s version of TikTok, which also allows fans to buy gifts that can be swapped for cash.

Beijing club One Third attracted more than 1 million viewers and generated nearly 2 million yuan (US$281,686) in rewards from its fans in a five-hour livestream, news Web site iFeng reported.

Closed nightclubs and DJs stuck at home are also hosting virtual dance parties in New York.

Live-performance outfit The Dance Cartel has started hosting “Social Disdance” parties three times per week for “dance nights together, apart.”

Participants dance with one another over the Zoom video chat app, with some donning costumes and others setting up colorful disco lights.

The parties are free, but people are encouraged to make donations to the DJs and hosts.

Singapore’s decision to close nightclubs came as authorities slowly tighten restrictions following a jump in cases. Despite the challenges, some performers are slowly warming to the idea of online clubbing.

“Online, I feel that everybody is more in their natural state,” said DJ LeNERD, who played at Friday’s event in Singapore. “They are more themselves and they are more honest.”

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content_text:
Virus Outbreak: Normal convention schedule hard to imagine: Biden

The COVID-19 pandemic is forcing US Democrats and Republicans to take a close look at whether they would be able to move forward as planned this summer with conventions that typically kick off the general election season.

In an interview with MSNBC this week, former US vice president Joe Biden, a prospective Democratic presidential nominee, said it was “hard to envision” a normal convention on July 13 to 16 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

However, the Democrats “have more time” to figure things out as party officials consider contingencies that could range from delaying the convention to making parts of the proceedings virtual so that not as many people attend, Biden said in an interview on The 11th Hour with Brian Williams.

“We were able to do it in the middle of a Civil War all the way through to World War II, have Democratic and Republican conventions and primaries and elections and still have public safety,” Biden said. “We’re able to do both.”

Republicans, meanwhile, are expressing confidence they can pull off their convention as scheduled in August, but party Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel still allows for the possibility that the pandemic could upend the party’s plans.

Neither Democratic nor Republican leaders want to sacrifice the boost that can result from an enthusiastic convention gathering.

US President Donald Trump thrives on big rallies and has obviously missed that part of his routine amid the coronavirus outbreak, reluctantly turning the Rose Garden and the White House briefing room into a substitute.

A traditional convention, with a nationally televised nomination acceptance speech, could be even more critical for Biden, who has been relegated recently to remote television interviews from his Delaware home, unable to draw the kind of spotlight that a sitting president commands.

Democratic National Committee authorities based in Milwaukee are exploring various options should social distancing recommendations still be in effect in the summer months.

Convention chief executive officer Joe Solmonese has not publicly detailed any specifics, promising only that “we will balance protecting the health and well-being of convention attendees and our host city with our responsibility to deliver this historic and critical occasion.”

Biden holds a prohibitive delegate lead that makes him the prospective nominee, but US Senator Bernie Sanders remains in the race and insists he has a “narrow” path to the nomination.

With many states pushing back their primaries, Sanders potentially could block Biden from accruing the required delegate majority until late June, just weeks before the convention.

Republicans do not face the internal party uncertainty, though they still must weigh the same public health scenarios.

McDaniel said she thinks “we should be out of this” by the end of August.

In an interview, she said Republicans already have raised the money necessary for the convention and have the staff hired and in place.

“We’re ready to go,” she said. “This isn’t something that’s going to stop us.”

Still, she added a caveat: “Obviously, science will dictate that.”

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content_text:
Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Air Force Shaanxi KJ-500 airborne early-warning aircraft and Shenyang J-11 fighters on March 16 conducted a nighttime exercise in the waters southwest of Taiwan and, in doing so, came close to the nation’s air defense identification zone.

Three days later, the PLA Navy’s fleet for Gulf of Aden escort mission sailed north in the Pacific off Taiwan’s east coast via the Miyako Strait on its way home.

Meanwhile, the US carried out freedom of navigation operations in the South China Sea and assembled the USS Theodore Roosevelt carrier strike group with the Expeditionary Strike Group to conduct drills in the region, including EP-3E Aries reconnaissance aircraft flying near southern China and Hong Kong several times.

The clouds of war seem to be gathering over the waters extending from the Taiwan Strait to the South China Sea.

Situated in the eye of the storm, Taiwan needs to pay serious attention to China’s and the US’ muscle-flexing, and try to understand if these actions are pre-war mobilizations or just normal training operations.

The US military is conducting freedom of navigation operations in the South China Sea to show that China’s territorial claims in the region contravene the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.

Such naval displays of force are routine and a continuous deployment aimed at achieving political goals, so it is not a question of pre-war mobilization.

The Roosevelt strike group and the expeditionary strike group led by the USS America, an amphibious assault carrier, were only conducting a high-intensity anti-airborne and sea-control joint-force exercise under a multithreat scenario.

In October last year, the USS Ronald Reagan carrier strike group and the USS Boxer amphibious ready group also met in the South China Sea to carry out similar exercises, so there is no need to make a fuss over it.

However, the US Air Force’s RC-135U reconnaissance aircraft that made multiple appearances in the South China Sea and the US Navy’s EP-3E Aries electronic reconnaissance aircraft that flew near Hong Kong on March 18 — both departing from Kadena Air Base, Okinawa — probably had a different purpose.

One possibility is that the deployment can be attributed to the Standard Missile 2 live-fire exercise launched by the Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruiser the USS Shiloh in the Philippine Sea in the same week, as disclosed in a tweet posted on March 22 by the US Navy’s Pacific Fleet on its Twitter account.

Another possibility is that it might have something to do with the US Navy’s Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer the USS Rafael Peralta, which sailed near the Yellow Sea in February and then transited from the East China Sea to the South China Sea last month.

Conducting low-speed offshore navigation and maintaining a distance of 400km of China’s coastline, the destroyer was probably collecting information about the operational mechanism of China’s anti-stealth radars deployed along the coastline from the Yellow Sea to the South China Sea.

The US reconnaissance aircraft could have also been conducting ordinary close-in reconnaissance missions.

Taiwan’s armed forces should pay particular attention to the new scenario of nighttime combat operations by the PLA’s airborne early warning aircraft and fighter jets.

In 2015, the RAND Corp think tank published a report entitled China’s Incomplete Military Transformation: Assessing the Weaknesses of the People’s Liberation Army, which said that, even in the 21st century, the PLA cannot fight effectively at night, an operating environment that poses a high risk of failure.

However, in 2018, footage of Shenyang J-15 carrier-based fighter jets taking off with a ski-jump from the Liaoning aircraft carrier and landing with the carrier’s arresting gear at night was shown on the Military Report show on China Central Television.

The PLA Air Force has also been flying close to the median line of the Taiwan Strait at night, sufficiently showing its efforts devoted to, and results arising from, nighttime exercises.

The US military is keeping a vigilant eye on the PLA, as the latter has made significant progress not only in military equipment, but also in tactical improvement.

Under this scenario, Taiwan needs to get ready and make comprehensive war preparations, which had better be done as soon as possible to be able to respond to the worst contingency.

Although the recent Chinese and US military deployments in East Asia still fall within the scope of normalized training, the PLA Air Force’s planes flying around Taiwan is certainly a provocation, quite contrary to the opinion of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Wu Sz-huai (吳斯懷), a retired lieutenant general.

Taiwan’s armed forces must react prudently and cautiously to the PLA’s actions.

Lu Li-shih is a former instructor at the Republic of China Naval Academy and a former captain of the ROCS Hsin Chiang.

Translated by Chang Ho-ming

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title: PLA exercises cause for concern


content_text:
CYCLING

Shutdown extended to June

Cycling’s shutdown was on Wednesday extended until June due to the COVID-19 pandemic, meaning that French one-week stage race the Criterium du Dauphine would be postponed, organizers said. However, the Tour de France, scheduled to start in Nice on June 27, remains on schedule. The Criterium was to have started in Clermont Ferrand on May 31, with the only remaining key Tour de France warm-up race not yet postponed being the Tour de Suisse. The Criterium is organized by Amoury Sports Organisation, which also runs the Tour de France. “The priority is the health of the nation,” group president Christian Prudhomme told reporters. “For now the Tour de France dates remain the same.” International Cycling Union president David Lappartient made the announcement of the extended suspension. The governing body said that it is preparing a new potential calendar taking into account different scenarios and would present it in the coming weeks.

OLYMPICS

Beijing studies Tokyo delay

Organizers of the 2022 Beijing Winter Games said that they would conduct a “detailed assessment” of the effects on their plans of the decision to postpone the Tokyo Games to next year. Beijing Games organizers said in a statement carried by Xinhua news agency that they were in close communication with the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to ensure that the “special situation” is handled properly. The IOC and local organizers last week agreed to push the Tokyo Games back a year because of the pandemic. The revised dates for Tokyo are July 23 to Aug. 8 next year. The Beijing Games are scheduled to open on Feb. 4, 2022. Although the Summer and Winter Olympics would now be held within six months of each other, Beijing organizers said that their preparations are on target and they have no plans to delay events. “We believe the Summer Games in Tokyo and the Winter Games in Beijing will both be a success,” the statement said. Beijing was awarded the games in 2015, beating Almaty, Kazakhstan, in the voting to become the first city to have been awarded both the Summer and Winter Olympics.

SOCCER

Bayern fine Jerome Boateng

Bayern Munich have fined defender Jerome Boateng for leaving the Munich, Germany, “without permission,” an act in breach of the strict rules of confinement imposed due to the pandemic. TVO reported that the 31-year-old had on Tuesday left the city to visit his sick son and was involved in a minor road accident. “Bayern defender Jerome Boateng left Munich yesterday without permission from the club,” the German champions said in a statement. “Boateng has transgressed the guidelines issued by the club by being too far away from his home… These guidelines govern the behavior of the FC Bayern players in the current situation in line with government directives on restrictions on movement and the recommendations of the health authorities.” Bayern did not specify the amount of the fine, which was being donated to local hospitals. “I know it was certainly a mistake not to inform the club of my journey, but at the time, I was only thinking about my son,” Boateng told Bild. “He was not in good health. If a son calls his father, then of course I will go, whatever the time of day.”

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title: SPORTS BRIEFS