title: Fulgent Sun operating income up 35.8 percent in Q1

content_text:
Fulgent Sun International Holding Co (鈺齊國際), which supplies sports shoes and functional outdoor shoes to global brands, on Friday reported that operating income in the first quarter rose 35.8 percent year-on-year to NT$356.38 million (US$11.84 million).

Gross margin and operating margin improved by 4.2 percentage points and 2.7 percentage points to 23.8 percent and 12.9 percent respectively, the company said in a statement.

Net income increased 72.5 percent year-on-year to NT$354.14 million, hitting a record high, with earnings per share of NT$2.02, while revenue grew 7.6 percent to NT$2.77 billion, it said.

“First-quarter revenue, operating income and net income all hit new highs for the same period in the company’s history. The increase in operating profit has also been greater than the increase in revenue for five consecutive quarters, demonstrating the results of management efficiency and economies of scale,” the statement said.

Fulgent Sun operates three plants in China, two in Vietnam and one in Cambodia.

The COVID-19 pandemic had led to delays in the restart of plants in China and reduced shipments in February and last month, Fulgent Sun said.

The company also faced challenges in the flow of people, logistics and transportation after the rapid spread of the coronavirus late last month forced governments to tighten measures to contain it, the company said.

“However, with multibrand orders, decentralized production bases, product mix optimization and better production efficiency, first-quarter operating performance and financial indicators were still able to grow against the industry’s trend and set a number of records for the same period,” the company said.

Fulgent Sun said it continued to add capacity to its facilities outside China in a bid to diversify risks, with operations in China, Vietnam and Cambodia accounting for 27.7 percent, 43.2 percent and 29.1 percent of its production capacity respectively in the first quarter.

That indicated non-China production had contributed more than 70 percent to the company’s total capacity, and Cambodia’s capacity has surpassed China’s for the first time, it said.

Still, the pandemic has affected global economic activity, disrupted the company’s production and sales, and led to a conservative attitude by brand customers in placing orders, Fulgent Sun said.

The business outlook for the next few months would depend on global epidemic control and end-market demand, it said.

Meanwhile, contract shoemaker Feng Tay Enterprises Co (豐泰企業) on April 10 reported net income of NT$1.28 billion for the first quarter, down 13 percent year-on-year, with earnings per share of NT$1.75. Consolidated revenue grew 7.01 percent year-on-year to NT$18.097 billion.

Yuanta Securities Investment Consulting Co (元大投顧) holds a conservative view on the company’s outlook this year, citing demand slowdown in the US and Europe, production disruptions in China and India, as well as the NBA suspending its season, which is likely to affect sales growth of Nike Inc’s basketball shoes.

“We expect second-quarter and third-quarter sales to fall up to 5 percent and 2 percent year-on-year [respectively], as Nike is likely to cut orders due to lockdowns in the US and EU markets in the second quarter, implying there will be some inventory buildup afterward,” Yuanta said in a note on Tuesday last week.

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content_text:
MARKET VOLATILITY:
 Analysts said Paiho’s second-quarter core business would be hit hard by pandemic response measures, depending on the end-market recovery

Shoelace, elastic band and fastener supplier Taiwan Paiho Ltd (台灣百和) last week reported better-than-expected profit for the first quarter, mainly due to an improved operating margin in its core business and contributions from subsidiary Paiho Shih Holdings Corp’s (百和興業) construction business in China.

Net income grew 31 percent year-on-year to NT$532.81 million (US$17.7 million) in the first quarter, or earnings per share of NT$1.79, with gross margin for its core business and China construction projects improving to 38.1 percent and 41.6 percent respectively, compared with 36.2 percent and 27.4 percent each a year earlier, the company said in a regulatory filing on Monday last week.

First-quarter consolidated revenue rose 5.63 percent year-on-year to NT$4.59 billion, consisting of NT$3.44 billion from its core business and NT$1.15 billion from construction projects in China, company data showed.

Sales of touch fasteners declined 5.9 percent year-on-year, elastic tapes fell 0.8 percent, molded hook and loop products dropped 3 percent, and powder coatings plunged 32.2 percent, the data showed.

Webbing and shoelace sales grew 8 percent, warp-knitted jacquard fabrics surged 126.1 percent and construction projects rose 2.8 percent, the data showed.

Improvement in gross margin for Paiho’s core business was driven by a favorable product mix as the firm continued to develop new higher-margin webbing and shoe tape — especially in the woven jacquard tapes segment, for which gross margin increased to 31.6 percent in the first quarter from 19 percent in the previous quarter — amid a product complexity trend in the industry, analysts said.

Gross margin from the company’s construction projects in China increased by 25 percent from a year earlier due to rising prices, they said.

However, Paiho’s revenue in the near term could decline from a year earlier, as its brand clients have deferred orders due to lockdowns in the US and Europe, and the postponement of the Olympic Games in Tokyo to next year, analysts said.

“Due to weak order visibility and [market] volatility, we see some likely downside given COVID-19, as its key clients include Adidas and Nike, and about 70 percent of its products are related to footwear and apparel,” Daiwa-Cathay Capital Markets Co (大和國泰證券) said in a note on Tuesday.

Paiho’s top five brand clients — Adidas AG, Nike Inc, Under Armour Inc, New Balance Athletics Inc and Puma AG — make up about 62 percent of its total sales.

The lockdowns in the US and Europe are likely to cause sales of its footwear and apparel to fall this year from last year, but the construction projects in China and the transferred orders could partially help it cushion the impact of COVID-19 this year, analysts said.

“The second-quarter core business products would be hit hard by COVID-19 and the impact would depend on whether the pandemic could be effectively controlled in the near future and how the end-market demand could recover,” Jih Sun Securities Investment Consulting Co (日盛投顧) said on Thursday.

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title: Paiho Q1 profit exceeds expectations


title: Virus Outbreak: Asia-Pacific virus bill could hit US$2tn

content_text:
BITTER MEDICINE:
 Social distancing rules and other measures to fight the virus would lead to income losses for households and firms, S&P Global Ratings said

The damage from the COVID-19 pandemic to economies in the Asia-Pacific region could reach US$2 trillion through next year, S&P Global Ratings said on Friday, as the coronavirus persists and the recovery of business conditions to pre-pandemic levels looks some way off.

The implementation of social distancing and other containment measures would continue in a bid to mitigate the effects of the outbreak until an effective vaccine is developed, but such practices will likely cause income losses for households and businesses, it said.

“As the COVID-19 pandemic endures, we are learning more about its human, economic and financial costs,” S&P Global Ratings Asia-Pacific chief economist Shaun Roache said in a statement. “The next lesson will be about the cost of transition between lockdown and vaccine.”

New Taipei City Tamsui District Administrator Arthur Wu, center, yesterday urges district residents to practice social distancing to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
 Photo: Chen Hsin-yu, Taipei Times

Economies in the region would enter a transition period until the middle of next year, during which social distancing measures would pervade in everyday life, although such constraints might differ by country and could be relaxed or tightened from time to time depending on the epidemic situation, the ratings agency said.

“Economic policies can limit some of the damage during first-wave containment, support the partial recovery through transition, and provide a bridge to the self-sustaining recovery that takes hold in late 2021. However, the costs continue to compound,” it added.

Based on S&P’s estimate, economic growth across the region would slow to 0.3 percent this year, which compares with 4.8 percent growth the agency forecast prior to the pandemic and marks the lowest since the 1.3 percent growth during the Asian financial crisis in 1997.

The IMF last week said that economic growth in the region will likely slow to a standstill this year, which has not happened in the past 60 years.

S&P said that Taiwan’s economy would shrink by 1.2 percent this year, down from its previous estimate of 1.9 percent expansion.

The ratings agency said it expects China’s economy to grow 1.2 percent, down from the 2.9 percent growth it projected earlier.

The agency cut its growth forecast for India from 3.5 percent to 1.8 percent and expects Japan’s economy to contract by 3.6 percent, compared with a decline of 1.2 percent it predicted earlier.

Governments in the region are facing imminent challenges, such as unemployment, from the pandemic, which would cause consumers to become more frugal, increase pressure on more leveraged households and take a toll on the broader economy, S&P said.

“From an economics perspective, the main risk now is unemployment,” Roache said. “Jobs are easily lost, but hard to win back and a surge in unemployment, say by more than 4 percentage points across the region, would mean a much flatter recovery path.”

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content_text:
Wuhan Zall, the Chinese Super League (CSL) team from the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic, made an emotional return to the city after more than three months torn from their families.

Zall endured a turbulent 104 days on the road, including being stranded in Spain, because Wuhan in January was sealed off when the virus killed and infected thousands there.

The city is now emerging from its weeks-long lockdown and hundreds of chanting fans met the Zall players when they arrived at Wuhan’s main railway station late on Saturday, state media reported.

People hold Wuhan Zall paraphernalia as the team arrive at a railway station in Wuhan, China, on Saturday.
 Photo: AFP

Wearing masks, the players had bouquets of flowers thrust into their hands while supporters clad in the team’s orange colors held banners and sang.

“After more than three months of wandering, the homesick Wuhan Zall team members finally set foot in their hometown,” the team said on social media.

The squad, led by Spanish coach Jose Gonzalez, are to spend a few days at home before resuming training on Wednesday.

“The local players will be reunited with their families, having not seen them for more than three months,” said Zall, who finished sixth last year in the top-flight CSL. “The club is very grateful for the support and understanding of the players’ families.”

The squad’s return home is the final chapter in a long saga.

They began training for the new CSL season, since postponed indefinitely, in early January in the southern city of Guangzhou.

They flew to Malaga, Spain, toward the end of January, by which time the city of Wuhan and its 11 million people were under harsh restrictions because of the outbreak of the novel coronavirus.

“They are not walking viruses, they are athletes,” Gonzalez told Spanish media at the time, pleading for his players not to be demonized.

However, when the virus began taking hold in Spain in March, Zall made arrangements to fly back to China, where the number of infections was slowing markedly.

Wuhan was still sealed off, so the squad, via a prolonged transit in Germany, flew the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen on March 16.

They went into three weeks of quarantine, followed by training in the nearby city of Foshan, before taking a high-speed train from Guangzhou to Wuhan on Saturday.

Zall are preparing for a season that still has no start date. The CSL was supposed to begin on Feb. 22, but could now begin in late June, reports have said.

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title: Wuhan soccer team make emotional return to city


title: Monkeys claim early-season initiative

content_text:
PLANET WATCHING?
 Rakuten’s performance may have boosted its global standing, with online polls indicating that global fans back them over other Taiwanese clubs

The Rakuten Monkeys are the early season leaders in Taiwanese professional baseball after they swept their three-game series against the Fubon Guardians with a 3-1 victory in Taoyuan last night, showing their opponents that they can win in a pitching duel.

The defending champions have sustained their form from last year’s Taiwan Series triumph, the Monkeys’ third consecutive Chinese Professional Baseball League (CPBL) title, after starting the season with five wins from five games.

Rakuten manager Tseng Hao-chu started second-year right-hander Weng Wei-chun to close out the series. Veteran pitcher Henry Sosa of the Dominican Republic took the mound for the Guardians.

The Fubon Guardians’ Lin Che-hsuan sets out for first after connecting with a pitch during their Chinese Professional Baseball League game against the Rakuten Monkeys at the Taoyuan International Baseball Stadium yesterday.
 Photo: CNA

The Monkeys got a run in the first inning and Fubon in their second to make the score 1-1 early on, before Weng settled down to limit the Guardians’ batters, while his teammates scored in the fifth and seventh.

Weng was taken out to leave the final frames to three Rakuten relievers, who pitched two scoreless innings.

Fubon put two runners on base with two outs in the final inning amid some shaky relief pitching and were a clutch hit from a win, but Rakuten closer Chen Yu-hsun — who has a record of giving up late runs and gave fans some tense moments, not least when he walked the first batter he pitched to — threw some heat to strike out Fubon shortstop Lee Chung-hsien to end the game.

Rakuten Monkeys pitcher Wang Wei-chun winds up during their Chinese Professional Baseball League game against the Fubon Guardians at the Taoyuan International Baseball Stadium yesterday.
 Photo: CNA

Sosa, a former Houston Astros player who has had four stints with South Korean teams, was tagged with the loss, giving up seven hits and yielding three runs, two of them earned. He has a 1-1 record after one week of the season.

The Monkeys have undergone a big transition after a change of management at the end of last year, with the owners of the Lamigo club, as it was known, sold to Japanese online retailing giant Rakuten Inc, which also owns the Sendai-based Rakuten Golden Eagles, who play in Nippon Professional Baseball’s Pacific League.

Former Monkeys’ manager Hong Yi-chung signed a three-year contract with the Guardians last year, leaving the job to Tseng Hao-chu.

However, Rakuten have shown their resilience with a three-game sweep of Hong’s new team after slugfests in the first two contests. Rakuten won 11-10 on Friday and 12-9 on Saturday.

The performance might have boosted Rakuten’s global standing, as Taiwan is apparently the only nation with professional baseball in play amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The games are being streamed to global audiences, with fans in the US and Japan, elsewhere in Asia and Europe able to watch.

International fans said in comments on social media that they are enjoying the games and thanked Taiwan for providing sports amid lockdowns in their nations.

Online polls and Twitter comments showed that most newcomers had become fans of the high-scoring Rakuten Monkeys, with the Brothers a distant second.

In Taichung, the Uni-President Lions defeated the Chinatrust Brothers Baseball Club 7-4 after grabbing three runs in the eighth frame.

With that key rally, on a two-run homer by outfielder Lin An-ke, Lions starter Shih Tzu-chien chalked up his first win of the season.


title: COVID-19 exposes the US’ broken healthcare system

content_text:
There were 27.9 million Americans without health insurance in 2018, and
record-high unemployment is expected to increase that figure by millions

With more than 39,000 people dead and more than 738,000 infected with COVID-19 in the US, the last question on a person’s mind should be how they will pay for life-saving treatment.

Yet as the death toll mounted, a patient who was about to be put on a ventilator in one of New York City’s stretched-to-capacity intensive care units had a final question for his nurse: “Who’s going to pay for it?”

Those were the patient’s final words to his medical team.

Derrick Smith, a nurse anesthetist at a New York City hospital wrote on Facebook last week: “Next-level heartbreak — having to hear a dying patient use his last words to worry about healthcare finances.”

In the wealthiest country in the world, the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the core of a healthcare system that is structurally incapable of dealing with it.

Federal and local governments, health insurers and employers have pledged to help Americans pay their way through this crisis, but to do so requires a dramatic overhaul of a system that has for decades prioritized cost over care.

“As this epidemic makes clear, at any moment, any of us could become sick, could become hospitalized, could be on a mechanical ventilator, and that, in the United States, could mean potentially ruinous healthcare costs,” said Adam Gaffney, an intensive care unit (ICU) doctor in Boston.

Gaffney is president of Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP), a group of more than 20,000 medical professionals who support universal healthcare in the US.

PNHP members see firsthand the consequences of people being forced to make medical decisions based on cost.

“I’ve heard from patients saying they’ve skipped their inhaler because they couldn’t afford the dose,” Gaffney said. “I’ve heard from patients who’ve gone for years without primary care because they were uninsured and wound up in the ICU.”

There were 27.9 million Americans without health insurance in 2018 and that figure is projected to increase by millions because of record-high unemployment.

The US government and major health insurers said they are covering the costs of COVID-19 testing and treatment, but fear of bankrupting costs and the byzantine complexities of the system leave unanswered questions about whether people will even seek care, let alone escape a potentially crippling medical bill weeks or months later.

How much testing and treatment costs individuals depends on if the patient was insured, how they were insured and whether they survived.

For example, a company that pays for its staff’s health insurance could decide not to cover an employee’s treatment, even if the health insurance company it is using had said it would waive payments related to COVID-19.

Simply overcoming the American instinct to question how much medical treatment costs is also a hurdle in the pandemic.

Since 2006, 30 percent of Americans each year on average have delayed any sort of medical treatment for cost, the polling firm Gallup said in a report in December last year.

In that time, 19 percent of Americans each year on average have delayed treatment for a serious condition, the report said.

More Americans are afraid of paying for healthcare if they became seriously ill (40 percent) than are afraid of getting seriously ill (33 percent), a 2018 poll by the University of Chicago and the West Health Institute showed.

“It’s hard to fight an epidemic if people are afraid to go to the doctor, to be seen in the emergency room,” Gaffney said. “It could mean some people not getting tested; it could mean some people delaying getting care and potentially harming their own health.”

The pandemic crisis is being further exacerbated by the system’s devotion to profits over people. Medical workers are being furloughed and losing jobs because of the pandemic — including those on the front lines — as their employers seek to cut costs.

Alteon Health, a private equity-backed company that employs about 1,700 emergency medicine doctors and other physicians, said that it would temporarily stop providing benefits including paid time off, the health Web site STAT said.

While ICUs and emergency rooms are billing sky-high figures, there has been a pause on non-essential care that has, in turn, cut medical system profits.

Without high-margin treatments such as physical therapy, cosmetic surgery and orthopedic procedures, medical systems are struggling to pay salaries and cover administrative costs.

The American Academy of Family Physicians projected 60,000 family practices would close or significantly scale back by June and 800,000 of their employees would be laid off, furloughed or have their hours reduced.

In hospital corridors across the country, staff are not just extra mindful of a dry cough and high temperature, but also that their salaries and work equipment are dependent on the bottom line.

“The bottom line has always been very forefront and this now puts into an extra level of being conscious on our mind to not waste money,” said Joe Manginn, an emergency room nurse in Madison, Wisconsin.

Manginn and his wife, who is also a healthcare worker, are on alert for their own healthcare costs.

“If we do get sick and need to be hospitalized, it hits us financially with the insurance and those kinds of payments, but it also hits us financially because we’re not able to work any longer,” Manginn said. “It’s a double whammy for the healthcare workers doing this right now.”

His health insurance, which also covers their three children, costs US$5,000 a year plus the money they set aside for out-of-pocket costs in a tax-free account.

“We work for the hospital, it should be that we would have the most access to it [healthcare], but unfortunately yeah, that’s not how our country is set up,” he said.

The US Congress has allocated US$100 billion to help hospitals.

On April 10, the White House said hospitals that accept the funds would not be allowed to use two common billing practices: to bill uninsured patients or bill them for getting care from a doctor who is at the hospital, but not directly employed by it.

Like other parts of the planned government response, questions remain about just how effective that money will be in addressing the convoluted healthcare landscape and if it will arrive in time to save jobs and clinics.

This major disruption to the US healthcare system might leave nurses and doctors jobless, but there are early indications that insurance companies could be insulated from the damage.

Not only did health insurance companies enter the crisis with capital, several analysts have anticipated that these companies could have lower costs because fewer people are seeking routine medical care.

David Blumenthal, president of the global health think tank the Commonwealth Fund, said that people who have coverage year-round would still be paying premiums, while insurers would have fewer procedures to cover.

“We will continue to pay our premiums, because we know that we could get coronavirus and end up in the intensive care unit and have to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars if we don’t have insurance,” Blumenthal said. “So we’re going to keep paying, but we’re not going to the doctor unless we absolutely need to. So that’s all good news for insurance companies.”

At the same time, the 16 million people who have lost their jobs in the past three weeks would put an increased burden on the healthcare system if they join the ranks of the uninsured or those who use Medicaid, government health insurance for low-income earners.

Blumenthal said that there are also knock-on health effects to the economic crisis, such as depression from income loss and malnutrition, which would make people more susceptible to illness.

Benjamin Sommers, a professor of health policy and economics at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, said that there are few signs the pandemic is driving US President Donald Trump’s administration to reflect on the healthcare system.

“We’ll have to see where the public ends up settling on in terms of what it demands from public officials in response to this epidemic,” said Sommers, a practicing primary care physician.

Gaffne said that he was certain the way healthcare is financed in the US is exacerbating the overall damage of the epidemic.

“At a time of soaring unemployment and at a time of deepening recession, people are going to be losing coverage and seeing more and more medical bills if they get sick,” Gaffney said. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

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title: Taipower on top after second win

content_text:
Kaohsiung-based Taipower moved to the top of the Taiwan Premier Football League table after the second round yesterday.

Taipower moved to 6 points from two wins after prevailing 1-0 over Tainan-based Taiwan Steel, while Hang Yuen fought out a 1-1 draw against Taichung Futuro.

In yesterday’s other matches, Taipei-based Tatung trounced the Taipei Red Lions 4-0 in a game streamed on CTFA.TV via YouTube that featured English-language commentary, while Ming Chuan University battled Taichung-based NTUPES to a 2-2 draw.

Commentators work on an English-language presentation of the Taiwan Football Premier League game between Tatung and Taipei Red Lions at the Taipei Stadium yesterday.
 Photo: CNA

Taiwan is among only five nations with top-division soccer action amid the COIVD-19 pandemic after soccer authorities in Burundi on Tuesday announced the suspension of all soccer. Clubs in Belarus, Tajikistan and Nicaragua have ongoing competitions and Turkmenistan resumed its top division Yokary Liga yesterday, with reigning champions Altyn Asyr to play Kopetdag in the capital, Ashgabat, last night.

Local fans have lauded Taiwan’s government and health authorities, saying that their efforts to contain the spread of COVID-19 outbreak have been outstanding, while other countries have shut down competitions.

Taiwan is apparently the only nation that has top-level soccer, baseball and basketball ongoing, although games are being played in stadiums with no fans.

Tatung’s goalkeeper takes a place-kick during their Taiwan Premier Football League game against the Taipei Red Lions in an empty Taipei Stadium yesterday.
 Photo: CNA

The situation has not gone unnoticed among international media and sports networks. With soccer fans around the world starved of live games, Belarusian matches are being carried in some other European countries.

Officials at the Chinese Taipei Football Association (CTFA) — the national body for the sport in Taiwan — said that the situation has presented the Taiwan Premier Football League with a golden opportunity to showcase its games to a worldwide audience.

Major sports networks are interested and discussions are under way on securing broadcast rights to league matches, league officials said.

As the deals are still being negotiated, CTFA officials cannot disclose the companies involved, although reports said that networks based in Europe and South America, as well as South Korea and other Asian countries were involved.

The first and second-round matches have been streamed, with all four matches featuring Chinese-language commentary, while one match has the option of English.

Netizens praised the CFTA for its efforts and said that they were happy to be able to see the games live.

Some asked that a weekly highlights package be made for each weekend.

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content_text:
The COVID-19 pandemic, which has infected more than 2.3 million people worldwide, has driven the global economy into its worst recession in a century.

The IMF in its World Economic Outlook last week forecast that global GDP would shrink 3 percent this year, down from the 3.3 percent expansion it forecast in January. That would be far worse than the 0.1 percent contraction the world experienced during the 2008-2009 global financial crisis.

The IMF’s growth predictions for various economies make it clear that the pandemic has triggered a global recession and no country can claim to be immune from the unprecedented economic tsunami.

Nevertheless, the IMF’s prediction for Taiwan’s economic growth still came as a surprise when it forecast that the nation’s economy would shrink 4 percent this year. That is worse than the 1.17 percent contraction it forecast for South Korea, where the epidemic situation is more serious, and far worse than the 1.6 percent decline Taiwan witnessed during the global financial crisis.

The pandemic has indeed weakened global demand and dealt a serious blow to global trade. Taiwan is susceptible to external shocks due to its small and open economy, and domestic demand has also been affected by disease prevention measures and weak consumer confidence.

As a result, about 20 major investment banks and research institutes at home and abroad have revised down their forecasts for Taiwan’s economic growth, but their predictions vary widely, ranging from 1.8 percent growth to a contraction of 4 percent.

Overall, the median forecast for the nation’s economic growth is 0.5 percent, which is much lower than the median forecast of 2.4 percent growth before the pandemic, according to a tally compiled by the central bank.

However, the IMF apparently did not take into account Taiwan’s performance in stopping the spread of the disease, which has been more successful than that of many other countries and so far thwarted major disruptions to the economy.

Economists have pointed to two main reasons for the IMF to have such a pessimistic outlook for Taiwan: First, the IMF in its economic forecast model assumed that economies without a major epidemic situation would all face a 5 percent reduction in working days. However, Taiwan has not experienced obvious supply-side constraints and production has remained relatively stable thanks to the government moving quickly to contain COVID-19, meaning that the IMF’s assumption does not conform to the reality in Taiwan.

Second, the IMF did not consider that Taiwan would benefit from the effects of trade diversion and investment repatriation in the post-pandemic era.

Given that Taiwan is one of the few countries where production lines still run smoothly, it stands to benefit from transferred orders as manufacturers continue to diversify their supply chain risks and boost inventories amid worries that the global supply chain might again be disrupted by lockdowns elsewhere.

Unlike in previous crises, Taiwan this time has some buffers to withstand economic shocks, despite a likely decline in global trade, the economists said.

While there is no need to over-interpret the IMF’s forecast for Taiwan, the pandemic did weigh on domestic demand, as people have been alarmed by the outbreak. Even though the movement of cross-border personnel and tourism would gradually recover once the outbreak is brought under control, they might take a long time to return to pre-pandemic levels.

Although economic and commercial activities worldwide would gradually restart once the pandemic eases, the global economic and trade environment would be vastly different and adjustments to the global supply chain would accelerate, which would open a window of opportunity for Taiwan.

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title: EDITORIAL: IMF overlooks the reality in Taiwan


content_text:
GERMANY

Virtual memorials held

The nation yesterday held virtual commemorations for the liberation of two Nazi concentration camps 75 years ago, as long-planned anniversary events have had to be canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Before the outbreak, dozens of survivors had planned to attend the ceremonies. In a video message, Minister of Foreign Affairs Heiko Maas said more than 20,000 people died at Sachsenhausen concentration camp north of Berlin, which meant that a minute’s silence for each of the victims would take two weeks. Many of those killed at Sachsenhausen were Soviet soldiers. The camp was also used to intern Jews, political prisoners, gays and Jehovah’s Witnesses from more than 40 countries. The virtual ceremony also commemorated the liberation of nearby Ravensbrueck concentration camp. Minister of Education, Society and Culture Monika Gruetters said the current closure of memorial sites due to the pandemic made it particularly important to hold virtual ceremonies and recall the atrocities committed by the Nazis.

GREECE

Fire damages migrant camp

One of the nation’s largest migrant camps has been extensively damaged in a fire, hours after the death of an Iraqi woman living there sparked unrest, officials said yesterday. The fire late on Saturday at Vial camp on Chios Island destroyed the facilities of the European asylum service, a canteen, tents and many housing containers, Ministry of Migration Secretary Manos Logothetis said. “A large part of the camp’s administrative services was destroyed,” he said, but no injuries were reported. A local police source said three persons had been detained in relation to the unrest.

RUSSIA

Money over toilet paper

While consumers around the globe last month were hoarding toilet paper ahead of a wave of government-imposed lockdowns, Russians were stockpiling cash. About 1 trillion rubles (US$13.6 billion) have been issued from cash machines and bank branches since the beginning of last month, more than during the whole of last year, central bank data show. “People were afraid that banks will be unavailable during the quarantine,” said Denis Poryvay, an analyst at Raiffeisenbank in Moscow. “They withdrew money for the same reason as people hoarded food.” Daily spikes in withdrawals coincide with President Vladimir Putin’s regular televised briefings outlining measures being taken to fight COVID-19. There was a spike in money being taken out after Putin announced a tax on bank deposits of more than 1 million rubles, and more cash was hoarded after he extended self-isolation measures until at least next month.

ISRAEL

Hezbollah actions criticized

The government on Saturday accused the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah of “provocative” activity along the Lebanese-Israeli border and said it would complain to the UN Security Council. Minister of Foreign Affairs Israel Katz accused Hezbollah of multiple attempts to breach the border on Friday night. The military fired flares along the frontier after signs of a possible border breach, and later said that it had found damage to its security fence in three locations.

SOUTH KOREA

New infections decrease

Seoul yesterday reported fewer than 10 new COVID-19 cases for the first day in two months, with eight new infections. Of the new cases, five were imported from overseas, the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. The death toll rose to 234. It was the first time since Feb. 18 that the nation reported a single-digit daily rise. The figure brings its total infections to 10,661. It has recently been reporting about 20 daily new cases. President Moon Jae-in said that the nation’s progress gave hope that the disease is “surmountable” in other parts of the world. “The government will prepare for new daily lives and the new world order ‘post-COVID’ with the unified power of the citizens,” he said.

SINGAPORE

Virus cases skyrocket

The Ministry of Health yesterday confirmed 596 new coronavirus infections, taking the total number of cases in the city-state to 6,558. The vast majority of the new cases are migrant workers living in dormitories and 25 are permanent residents, it said in a statement. Meanwhile, Indonesia has the most cases in Southeast Asia with 6,575 cases and the Philippines has 6,259.

THAILAND

Virus count rises to 2,765

The kingdom yesterday reported 32 new coronavirus cases, bringing its total to 2,765, a senior official said. Of the new cases, 28 were in Bangkok, Center for COVID-19 Situation Administration spokesperson Taweesin Wisanuyothin said. No new fatalities were reported. The nation has had 47 deaths from the coronavirus.

UNITED KINGDOM

Care deaths could top 7,500

The number of people killed by the coronavirus in care homes could be as high as 7,500 — five times the official estimate, said Care England, the nation’s largest representative body for care homes. “Without testing, it is very difficult to give an absolute figure,” the care home charity’s chief executive officer Martin Green told the Daily Telegraph. “However, if we look at some of the death rates since April 1 and compare them with previous years’ rates, we estimate a figure of about 7,500 people may have died as a result of COVID-19.” The figure is higher than the estimate of 1,400 suggested by the government earlier this week, and far in excess of the 217 care home deaths recorded by the Office for National Statistics up to April 3, the most recent date for which official data is available.

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title: World News Quick Take


title: Bankers spurn commodity traders

content_text:
Bankers are increasingly reluctant to give commodity traders in Asia the credit they need to survive as the lenders grow ever more fearful about the risk of a catastrophic default.

Their anxiety has reached new heights in recent days as Singapore oil trader Hin Leong Trading Pte Ltd (興隆貿易) struggles to repay debts said to amount to almost US$4 billion.

That is just weeks after another commodities firm in the city-state, Agritrade International Pte Ltd (鴻寶), collapsed after a unit defaulted on its loans.

It could be a bumper time for commodity traders as the huge swings in prices prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic create the sort of volatility on which they thrive.

However, unless they have got the deep pockets and credit history of a trading powerhouse like Trafigura Group Ptd Ltd (托克集團) or Vitol Group (維多集團), they face being frozen out of the market by risk-averse bankers demanding crippling terms or refusing to lend to them altogether.

“Only large trading houses are able to play with such a market and cope with the underlying risks,” said Jean-Francois Lambert, an industry consultant and former trade finance banker at HSBC Holdings PLC. “Banks are tightening their exposures on every front. With regard to commodity trading, their reaction is to fly for quality and be quite restrictive on everything else.”

Trade financing and access to capital are the lifeblood of the traditionally high-volume, low-margin business of trading commodities. Letters of credit are a critical part of that infrastructure.

A bank issues letters of credit on behalf of the buyer as a guarantee of payment to the seller. Once the goods have exchanged hands, the buyer repays the lender.

However, traders of everything from zinc to oil interviewed by Bloomberg said that their bankers were pulling back from short-term financing. Lenders are asking for more collateral, financing costs have jumped and in some cases the banks are simply refusing to issue letters of credit altogether to some smaller companies, according to the traders, who asked not to be identified because they are not authorized to speak publicly.

That is echoed by lenders themselves, with at least four telling Bloomberg that they were reducing their exposure to commodities by cutting short-term loans to some clients and only lending to the biggest traders.

While this remains an Asian problem for now, there is growing consternation that it could spread to the US or Europe.

Saad Rahim, the chief economist of trading giant Trafigura, said that a global tightening of credit across all sectors is a looming threat.

“We have been talking about this as a series of cascading waves. First the virus, then the economic and then potentially the credit side of it,” Rahim said in an interview from Geneva, Switzerland.

The tightening of credit is another example of the extraordinary impact that the novel coronavirus is having on global commodity markets, from crude oil to copper. Measures to contain the pandemic are hammering demand for raw materials, throwing supply chains into chaos and forcing producers to shut down mines, refineries and processing plants.

The disruptions are putting unprecedented strain on the companies that extract, produce and process commodities, triggering defaults and even bankruptcies as prices plunge.

Traders might find themselves with products they cannot sell or stockpiled material that has plunged in value.

The risks in such circumstances are manifold. Tighter liquidity can constrain traders’ ability to meet margin calls and pay their loans, while they also face the prospect of a counterparty failing, Lambert said.

For many banks, the danger that clients might be caught out is proving too great. Some have more than doubled the rate at which they will lend, according to the traders and lenders interviewed by Bloomberg.

Banks were already pulling back from commodities in Asia before the chaos triggered by the pandemic. Over the past few years the industry has been rocked by a number of high-profile collapses and scandals, including multimillion dollar losses by some major Chinese and Japanese traders, and the spectacular downfall of Noble Group, one of the biggest names in the industry.

“Lenders are bound to be cautious as commodity traders face a triple-whammy of increased price volatility, supply chain disruptions and counterparty risks,” said Soo Cheon Lee (李秀天), chief investment officer at SC Lowy, a global banking and asset management group in Hong Kong. “We’re expecting the near-term disruption on their earnings as a result.”

Some traders are resorting to borrowing from two or more banks to finance a single deal, but ultimately the credit crunch could squeeze some of them out of the market.

Cheap funding is critical for commodity traders as they typically focus on high volumes instead of big margins, Lee said.

Higher funding costs will undermine their ability to be competitive in this environment, he said.

“Smaller players, unlike larger traders, are exposed in such market conditions with often slim liquidity and are often much less equipped to monitor their books and communicate effectively with their lenders,” Lambert said. “In the case of doubts or difficulty to assess the market position of their smaller customers, banks will not hesitate to reduce their lines.”

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content_text:
Physician: non-smokers can also get lung cancer
醫師提醒：不抽菸仍可能罹患肺癌

Lung cancer has long been the biggest killer of the 10 deadliest cancers in Taiwan and, compared with other cancers, lung cancer cells are especially likely to migrate to the brain. One woman of over 80 years old was confirmed as having lung adenocarcinoma that spread into the brain, but fortunately targeted therapy proved effective and, after receiving medication managed to maintain a good quality of life, without needing to receive chemotherapy even two years into the treatment.

According to Hsieh Yao-yu, a doctor in the Hematology and Oncology Department of Shuangho Hospital, the woman developed lung adenocarcinoma, which then moved to the brain. The brain tumor had to be surgically removed, while the lung cancer was treated mainly with targeted therapy.

In Taiwan, lung adenocarcinoma affects women more than men, and these women often have no history of smoking. Medical and academic research looking into the reasons that these non-smokers still develop lung adenocarcinoma are ongoing.

According to doctors, some patients can still develop lung adenocarcinoma even if they do not smoke.
醫師提醒，有些病患沒有抽菸，仍罹患肺腺癌。
 File Photo: Liberty Times
照片：自由時報資料照

Hsieh says that epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) and anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK) genes are the main driver mutation genes behind lung adenocarcinoma, and that EGFR gene mutations are seen in between 50 to 60 percent of patients of East Asian descent, and as such are seen as a main cause for the disease. Targeted therapies have proven to be very effective against mutations in these receptor genes in late stage lung cancer. Prior to receiving these targeted therapies, the patient must first undergo genetic testing, to determine whether this kind of gene is present.

The experience of Taiwan’s National Health Insurance system shows that, at present, the second generation of EGFR-targeted therapies appear to reduce the risk of mortality by 18 percent compared to the previous generation, and also reduce the treatment failure risk by between 20 and 30 percent, extending the life of the patient and elongating the progression-free period by at least three months.

When considering which type of treatment to follow, whether to use targeted therapies and which medication is the most appropriate, Hsieh recommends that patients consult with their doctor on factors such as the specifics of their condition and the economic burden of the treatment — for example, whether or not the treatment is covered by health insurance — as well as being mindful of the potential side effects of the medication and the optimum time to have the treatment. Lung cancer patients nowadays are still able to enjoy a good quality of life.

(Translated by Paul Cooper, Taipei Times)

肺癌長年佔據國人十大死亡癌症之首，且相較其它癌症，肺癌癌細胞特別容易轉移到腦部。一名八十多歲婦人被確診肺腺癌轉移腦部，但幸好標靶藥物有效，服藥後生活治理能力維持得不錯，服藥兩年仍不需要做化療。

雙和醫院血液腫瘤科醫師謝燿宇說，這名婦人罹患肺腺癌還轉移到腦部，對腦部腫瘤需要開刀，對肺部腫瘤仍先以標靶藥物治療為主。

國內肺腺癌病患多是女性、且常沒有吸菸史，對於這類不抽菸卻仍罹患肺腺癌的原因，目前醫界和學界仍在探討。

謝燿宇說，肺腺癌的主要驅動突變基因分別是「EGFR」(表皮生長因子受體)和「ALK」(間變性淋巴瘤激酶)，EGFR基因突變在東亞裔病人約占五到六成左右，而肺腺癌病患算大宗，標靶藥物對有此受體突變的晚期肺癌都有很好的療效，接受標靶藥物治療前得先做基因檢測，看有無此基因突變。

根據台灣健保實際使用經驗分析，目前第二代的EGFR標靶藥物與第一代相比，看起來降低了百分之十八的死亡風險，同時降低二到三成的治療失敗風險，並延長生存且無惡化的時間至少近三個月。

該用哪種治療方式、是否該使用標靶藥物或適合哪種藥物，謝燿宇建議病患最好和醫師多討論，包括病況、經濟負擔──譬如藥物有無健保給付等──並留意藥物副作用與及時處理，現在的肺癌病患也可以享有良好的生活品質。

(自由時報)

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content_text:
A ‘RALLYING CRY’:
 Global Citizen, which hosted the event, said that it has raised US$35 million for local organizations and the COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund

A virtual concert packed with A-listers — from The Rolling Stones to Taylor Swift to Billie Eilish — entertained fans worldwide with a show celebrating health workers, as billions shelter at home due to COVID-19.

Lizzo, Jennifer Lopez, Stevie Wonder, Paul McCartney and LL Cool J also joined in the Lady Gaga-curated online party, which was backed by the international advocacy organization Global Citizen in partnership with the WHO.

Before opening the show Lady Gaga — who began working with Global Citizen and the WHO weeks ago to raise money for the battle against COVID-19 — said that she was praying for medical workers and also “thinking of all of you that are at home, who are wondering when this is all going to be different.”

“What I’d like to do tonight, if I can, is just give you the permission to, for a moment — smile,” she said as she broke into a rendition of Nat King Cole’s Smile.

Stevie Wonder then wowed with a tribute to the late soul legend Bill Withers.

Sitting at his home piano Wonder, who turns 70 next month, played Lean On Me before launching into his own Love’s In Need Of Love Today in his singular crystal-clear voice.

Mick Jagger also appeared ageless despite his 76 years as he delivered the classic You Can’t Always Get What You Want, as his fellow Stones played from their respective homes, including a grinning Charlie Watts on the air drums.

Also at her piano, Swift played the vulnerable Soon You’ll Get Better, which the pop star wrote about her mother’s struggles with cancer.

Global Citizen intended the primetime event broadcast on major television networks worldwide — and hosted by American late-night television personalities Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert — not as a fundraiser, but as a moment of unity through song.

They also planned it as a “rallying cry” to support health workers, while coronavirus has at least 4.5 billion people forced or urged to stay home.

Prior to the event Global Citizen began urging philanthropists, companies and governments to support the WHO in its coronavirus response efforts, saying that it has raised US$35 million for local organizations and the international health body’s COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund.

In addition to performances — McCartney played Lady Madonna, as Lizzo belted out a powerful version of A Change Is Gonna Come — the event highlighted the efforts of essential workers worldwide, including medical personnel and those delivering food and sanitary products to vulnerable populations.

None other than “Queen Bey” herself joined in to thank “true heroes” who are “away from their families, taking care of ours.”

Beyonce, a Houston native, also emphasized that the coronavirus pandemic in the US is disproportionately affecting black Americans, who make up a large part of “essential parts of the workforce that do not have the luxury of working from home,” she said.

Indian actor Shah Rukh Khan and Nigerian singer Burna Boy were among the participants in the event that included former US first ladies Michelle Obama and Laura Bush as well as media personality and philanthropist Oprah.

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title: Virus Outbreak: Concert honors health workers


title: World Rugby’s Beaumont seeks calendar consensus

content_text:
World Rugby chairman Bill Beaumont said that the unity shown in the global game during the COVID-19 pandemic would hopefully lead to a new international competition along the lines of last year’s nations championship proposal.

Beaumont, who faces a challenge for his job from Argentine vice-chairman Agustin Pichot in an election this month, said that securing agreement over a global season was one of his main ambitions for a second four-year term.

A proposal for a 12-team competition bringing together the Six Nations and the Rugby Championship with the addition of two other nations was scuppered last year because of a relegation element feared by weaker European nations.

Bill Beaumont poses for a photograph at the Rugby World Cup 2023 host country announcement at the Royal Garden Hotel in London on Nov. 15, 2017.
 Photo: Reuters

Beaumont said that many around the rugby world might have reconsidered their positions in the light of the financial hardship unions are facing in the wake of the shutdown of the sport during the pandemic.

“I’m pretty confident that there will be a variant of a sort of nations” championship, the former England captain told the BBC. “I think there’s a real spirit of collaboration between the north and the south. Look, what we can do with our playing windows? What can we do in the international windows that can generate more funds from another competition?”

Beaumont and Pichot were both drivers of the original nations championship initiative, which had attracted the offer of major financial backing from venture capitalists.

Securing a proper global season has always previously foundered on the competing demands of Test rugby, the World Cup, British and Irish Lions tours as well as European club leagues.

“It’s a balancing act that you have to do to fit everything into this jigsaw, but I think in the past people have been quite protective about what they have got, what we are looking at now this is probably a reality check in the sport,” Beaumont said. “And you are pretty foolish if you don’t learn lessons.”

World Rugby on Thursday announced that it had created a US$100 million relief fund to help unions through the lockdown period and Beaumont said securing the future of the game remained his immediate priority.

“I think it’s one of those situations where everyone is in it together,” he said. “We are facing these challenges and the timing is not great, but we have to think about people who are really suffering at the moment and our thoughts are with them.”

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content_text:
Virus Outbreak: France tests for virus in care homes to combat loneliness

DISPROPORTIONAL SHARE:
 More than a third of France’s 17,000 COVID-19 deaths have been in nursing homes, where residents are confined to their rooms to protect them from virus infection

Some were born in this warren of small rooms in what used to be a hospital, dating to the 17th century. Many are likely to die here, and all are currently confined to their rooms, denied the simple comfort of human companionship.

The residents at the Weiss nursing home in eastern France want to chat face to face, to play board games, to share meals.

So, each gave a vial of blood to be tested for the coronavirus, as did each staff member — about 580 tests in all. The goal: to identify who must be isolated and who would be allowed the freedom to leave their rooms.

“We spend all our days between those four walls — that’s it, we are not allowed to go out. We don’t even have the right to go out in the hallway,” said Henry Bohn, a 69-year-old who suffered a stroke that has left him in a wheelchair.

“They bring us breakfast, lunch and dinner here in the room. Luckily, we have the sun these days and it helps, but we do miss the essential things,” he said.

Comprehensive testing was ordered by local authorities in the Haut-Rhin region. The site in Ammerschwir poses particular problems with its small rooms and long corridors, and residents with often-severe cognitive difficulties.

“It is hard for them to remember the rules that we give them. When we put masks on them, they hardly keep them on, and they need to socialize and leave their rooms,” head nurse Sylvie Ghiringhelli said.

Some patients wander out anyway, clustering in hallways or taking seats in the common room before they can be led gently back.

The elderly make up a disproportional share of coronavirus victims globally, and that is especially true in nursing homes, which have seen a horrific number of deaths worldwide.

In France, nursing home deaths account for more than a third of the country’s total 17,000 coronavirus victims — figures the government now documents meticulously after weeks of pressure. Infections have swept through the country’s 7,000 residences for the elderly, with more than 15,000 confirmed cases among patients and 8,900 among staff between March 1 and Tuesday last week.

Restricting residents to their rooms can take a different kind of toll.

“The confinement stopped all the communal meals in the dining room, stopped every form of social life,” Ghiringhelli said. “There are no more activities, no more visits. Our residents bear the consequences.”

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content_text:
More than 260 million Orthodox Christians yesterday celebrated Easter Sunday, with church leaders asking worshipers to stay at home to avoid spreading COVID-19.

Orthodox Christians, the world’s third-largest group of Christian believers, this year celebrate Easter a week after Catholics and Protestants because they follow a different calendar.

Last week’s Easter celebrations took place in empty churches while Pope Francis livestreamed his traditional message from the Vatican, as the pandemic that has killed more than 160,000 made massed worship too risky.

Orthodox Church of Ukraine priest Bohdan, right, sprinkles holy water on believers and their Easter basket near their house in the village of Buzova near Kiev yesterday during a lockdown imposed by local authorities to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Orthodox Christians worldwide celebrated Easter yesterday.
 Photo: Reuters

Most Orthodox Christians would also skip traditional midnight services, even though Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union where most live have relatively low numbers of confirmed cases of the virus so far.

Moscow’s Patriarch Kirill, who leads 150 million believers, has urged the faithful to pray at home and not go to church until he gives his blessing.

Russian President Vladimir Putin was dropping his usual attendance at an Easter service and planned to go to a chapel in the grounds of his residence outside Moscow.

Ethiopian Orthodox Christian priests hold candles during the Holy Fire ceremony on Saturday at Deir El Sultan, next to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, in Jerusalem’s old city. Orthodox Christians believe that the Holy Fire emanates from within the Tomb of Christ, believed to be under the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
 Photo: EPA-EFE

In Moscow and the surrounding region, where most Russian COVID-19 cases are concentrated, churches were to hold services behind closed doors with broadcasts online or on television.

However, churches were to remain open in many regions of the country, which has reported more than 42,850 cases of coronavirus and more than 360 deaths. Church officials asked worshippers to keep their distance, wear masks and not kiss icons.

In much of the wider Orthodox region, churches were not open to the public.

The Istanbul-based Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople announced that services would be closed to the public and broadcast online.

The same decision was taken in Cyprus, Greece, Serbia and North Macedonia, as well as in Egypt, where Orthodox Coptic Christians comprise 10 to 15 percent of the population.

Jerusalem’s Old City is normally packed for Orthodox Easter, but was almost deserted over the weekend due to Israel’s strict lockdown measures.

The annual Holy Fire ceremony took place on Saturday behind closed doors in the city’s Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

A small group of clerics at the church celebrated the ancient ceremony, which normally draws enormous crowds as a flame is transferred to faithful around the globe from within a chamber where Christians believe Jesus was buried and rose from the dead.

In Romania, while churches had closed their doors, volunteers and priests planned to go to people’s homes handing out loaves of consecrated bread and sharing the holy flame, a compromise that angered some people.

“If we can go to a pharmacy to get medicines for our body, why can’t we go to church for our spiritual medicine?” asked Monica Georgescu, an Orthodox Christian in her 70s who lives in Bucharest and says she has not missed an Easter service since childhood.

A number of Orthodox churches have opposed the imposition of lockdown measures.

In Bulgaria, the Orthodox Church insisted services would be open to all, but worshipers were required to wear masks and stand at a minimum distance from each other.

In Georgia, which has 394 confirmed cases, the government bowed to pressure from religious authorities and allowed services in the largest churches despite a public lockdown, while no senior officials were to attend.

Ukraine saw a similar divergence of views with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky urging people to stay at home and linking a surge in infections to last week’s Catholic celebrations, while the Orthodox Church encouraged worshipers to gather in the open-air.

In Belarus, a country of 9 million with a relatively high number of cases, the situation was reversed.

Belarusian Church leader Metropolitan Pavel urged believers to stay at home, saying: “Ritual is secondary while human life is much more valuable.”

However, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko — who regularly casts doubt on the pandemic — insisted that he would attend an Easter service, saying: “I will be in church. It is my tradition.”

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title: Virus Outbreak: Orthodox Easter worshipers face choice


content_text:
It is human nature to discuss issues, share gossip and criticize each other’s ideas. This is especially true for academics, who love making and defending arguments. However, in a pandemic, they must be careful to use their knowledge and voices responsibly.

Some intellectuals use clever arguments, colorful charts and attractive figures to suggest that Taiwan’s COVID-19 situation is in danger of becoming like Japan’s out-of-control emergency scenario.

Although their intentions are unclear, some appear to be taking advantage of the circumstances to gain fame and build a fan base.

Their words can result in a dangerous level of panic, so it is important to understand how the situations in Taiwan and Japan differ.

During the past two months, the Taiwanese government and public have worked together to defend against new incursions of the coronavirus. Other countries are looking at Taiwan as an example of a successful defense strategy.

A small number of local infections were diagnosed and treated immediately, with the rest involving individuals arriving from overseas. As of Tuesday last week, there were only three cases out of a total of 393 for which no infection source could be identified.

For all others, the sources and transmission paths were clear.

The situation in Japan is different. Multiple community infections with unknown sources for individual cases emerged early last month. Infection numbers exploded one week after its three-day vernal equinox holiday (March 20 to 22), with each day bringing a record number of cases.

By April 11, the number of infections in Japan had exceeded 6,000, a sixfold increase from before the holiday.

There are two explanations for Japan’s situation. First, there were numerous coronavirus carriers already in the country before the holiday, with many contagious individuals not yet exhibiting symptoms.

They did not know their infection status, and therefore they freely went about their daily activities.

Second, Japanese cherry trees blossomed early this year — in many places they peaked during the three-day holiday. Large numbers of Japanese took advantage of the holiday to enjoy the cherry blossoms, and the crowds created perfect environments for virus transmission.

Many Japanese have expressed deep regret about what happened, but at the time, they were unaware of the number of coronavirus carriers in their midst.

Meanwhile, one week after Taiwan’s four-day spring holiday, the nation was not experiencing an explosive outbreak or setting new infection records every day. The efforts of the Taiwanese government (especially its public health agency workers) and citizens, as well as the nation’s experience with the SARS outbreak in 2003, are to thank for this.

Although there are no local COVID-19 cases in Taiwan — that is, no cases that have not been tracked to their (mostly overseas) sources — many people are living with tension, suspicion and fear. It is the responsibility of academics to help people understand the actual situation, and to guide them in continuing the fight to keep the coronavirus under control.

Instead of using false comparisons, clever wordplay or fancy charts that can cause confusion, intellectuals should do their part in guiding Taiwanese through this crisis.

Huang Chung-yuan is a professor at Chang Gung University’s Graduate Institute of Computer Science and Information Engineering.

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title: Academics should help people, not sow fear


content_text:
Virus Outbreak: Girls’ robotics team in Afghanistan try to build ventilators

On most mornings, Somaya Farooqi and four other teenage girls pile into her dad’s car and head to a mechanic’s workshop. They use back roads to skirt police checkpoints set up to enforce a lockdown in their city of Herat, one of Afghanistan’s hot spots of the coronavirus pandemic.

The members of Afghanistan’s prize-winning girls’ robotics team say that they are on a lifesaving mission — to build a ventilator from used car parts and help their war-stricken country battle the virus.

“If we even save one life with our device, we will be proud,” Farooqi, 17, said.

A group of girls on April 8 work on a type of inexpensive ventilator device using Toyota car spare parts to help hospitals care for patients with the coronavirus in Herat Province, Afghanistan.
 Photo: AP

Their pursuit is particularly remarkable in conservative Afghanistan. Only a generation ago, during the rule of the Islamic fundamentalist Taliban in the late 1990s, girls were not allowed to go to school. Farooqi’s mother was pulled from school in third grade.

After the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, girls returned to schools, but gaining equal rights remains a struggle. Farooqi is undaunted.

“We are the new generation,” she said in a telephone interview. “We fight and work for people. Girl and boy, it does not matter anymore.”

Afghanistan faces the pandemic nearly empty-handed. It has only 400 ventilators for a population of more than 36.6 million.

So far, it has reported more than 900 coronavirus cases, including 30 deaths, but the actual number is suspected to be much higher since test kits are in short supply.

The Herat Province in western Afghanistan is one of the nation’s hot spots because of its proximity to Iran, the region’s center of the outbreak.

This has spurred Farooqi and her team members, ages 14 to 17, to help come up with a solution.

On a typical morning, Farooqi’s father collects the girls from their homes and drives them to the team’s office in Herat, zigzagging through side streets to skirt checkpoints.

From there, another car takes them to a mechanic’s workshop on the outskirts of the city.

In Herat, residents are only permitted to leave their homes for urgent needs. The robotics team has a limited number of special permits for cars

So far, Farooqi’s father has not been able to get one, but the girls are in a hurry.

“We are concerned about security driving out of the city, but there is no other option, we have to try to save people’s life,” Farooqi said.

At the workshop, the team is experimenting with two different designs, including an open-source blueprint from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The parts being used include the motor of a Toyota windshield wiper, batteries and sets of bag valve masks, or manual oxygen pumps. A group of mechanics helps them build the frame of a ventilator.

Farooqi, who was just 14 years old in 2017 when she participated in the first World Robot Olympiad in the US, said that she and her team members hope to make a contribution.

“Afghans should be helping Afghanistan in this pandemic,” she said.

“We should not wait for others,” she added.

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title: Book reveals sex secrets of French presidents’ palace

content_text:
WHAT THE BUTLERS SAW:
 For at least 300 years, staff at the Elysee Palace witnessed men flaunting their power over women, but no longer, a new book says

From the time of kings and emperors to modern-day presidents, the Elysee Palace has stood as a symbol of male dominance in society and politics. Behind the wrought iron gates its gilded salons have witnessed conquests of many kinds — including, frequently, the sexual.

Now a prominent historian has argued that, just as French society is changing with the #MeToo movement and greater scrutiny of predatory behavior, so too must the country’s presidents.

“In the past, it was almost a mark of prestige that a man of power like the president had a mistress, almost as a kind of gauge that he was a true leader, even if these dominant males were almost a kind of predator,” said Jean Garrigues, author of a new book on the Elysee’s scandalous past. “The behavior of French presidents was like that of a monarch. Today, this type of behavior that treats women as objects and trophies is no longer accepted in society.

A staff member walks in the front courtyard of the Elysee Palace in Paris on March 24.
 Photo: Reuters

“We have the #MeToo movement. We don’t tolerate the subjugating of women or that they are some kind of hunting trophy. The erotic story of the Elysee shows us the evolution of our society,” he said.

“It’s the first time we’ve seen advisers working this hard,” an unnamed butler, who was described as having worked at the presidential palace for 40 years, told Le Figaro magazine. “We’re bored stiff at the Elysee. No one bonks any more. Before you had to knock two or three times at doors to be certain not to interrupt someone in a compromising position.”

Another anonymous witness told the magazine: “With this administration, all the libido of power is going into drawing up technical notes.”

In Une histoire erotique de l’Elysee, Garrigues details how the palace has been at the center of some of the country’s most notorious sex scandals for 300 years.

The Elysee was commissioned by the Count of Evreux, who used the dowry of his 12-year-old wife, Marie-Anne Crozat, daughter of Paris’ richest man. No sooner was it completed than Evreux bundled Marie-Anne into a carriage during the inauguration ball, ordered the driver to take her to their country home and installed his mistress in the property.

Shortly afterwards, Louis XV acquired the property for his mistress, the Marquise de Pompadour, who held lavish parties where she would pick young women to have sex with the king, Garrigues said.

Since 1848, the Elysee has been the official home of French presidents, and while at least two, Charles de Gaulle and Georges Pompidou, were faithful, others were decidedly not.

This arguably reached a peak during the 1981-1995 rule of Francois Mitterrand, who was most notorious for keeping a secret second family installed in an annex of the Elysee, with the knowledge of his long-suffering wife, Danielle.

Mitterrand had many other affairs, and his behavior bordered on harassment, Garrigues said.

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title: India toughens its investment rules to curb takeovers

content_text:
India has stepped up scrutiny of investments from companies based in neighboring countries, in what is widely seen as a move to stave off takeovers by Chinese firms during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Indian Ministry of Trade said in a notification dated April 17 that the changes to federal rules on investment were meant to curb “opportunistic takeovers/acquisitions.”

It did not mention China.

Investments from an entity in a country that shares a land border with India would require Indian government approval, the ministry said, meaning they can not go through an automatic route.

“These times should not be used by other countries to take over our companies,” a senior government official told reporters.

Similar restrictions are already in place for Bangladesh and Pakistan, but up to now, they have not applied to China and India’s other neighbors with land borders: Bhutan, Afghanistan, Myanmar and Nepal.

“This will certainly impact sentiment among Chinese investors. However, greenfield investments will not be impacted,” said Santosh Pai, a partner at Indian law firm Link Legal, which advises several Chinese companies.

A report in February by research group Gateway House said that Chinese foreign direct investment into India stood at US$6.2 billion.

China’s ByteDance Ltd (字節跳動) has plans to invest US$1 billion in India, while automakers including Great Wall Motor Co Ltd (長城汽車) and MG Motor, a unit of China’s SAIC Motor Corp (上海汽車), have said they intend to invest millions.

Delano Furtado, a partner with law firm Trilegal, said that the notification might also affect Chinese companies with existing investments in the country.

“Any follow-on investments in those entities may now require approvals,” Furtado said.

India’s notification said that government approval would also be needed to change the ownership of an Indian entity that had existing foreign investment.

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title: Friends shun protesters from mainland China in Hong Kong

content_text:
Minnie Li (黎明) and Nannan were nervous as they walked into a Hong Kong restaurant with several friends offering donations of masks and hand sanitizer in the middle of a pandemic.

They were not worried about catching the novel coronavirus. They were afraid of the reception they might get as mainland Chinese. As the virus was spreading from the mainland to Hong Kong, the restaurant chain’s pro-democracy owner had banned Mandarin speakers in a post on Facebook: “You will not seal the border, so I am sealing my shop.”

It did not matter that Li and Nannan were pro-democracy protesters themselves, risking the wrath of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) authorities back home to join the demonstrations that rocked the territory last year.

The restaurant’s owner condemned their outreach as “a sting operation,” in the latest sign of rising anti-mainland sentiment in Hong Kong — even against those who have been fighting on the same side.

That experience brought home an uncomfortable reality: that the territory they cherish for the freedoms they did not have back home might not cherish them in return.

Since Hong Kong reported its first coronavirus case in January, the young women said they have been castigated as “oppressors” and “colonizers,” including by friends who once rallied with them through clouds of tear gas.

Tensions between Hong Kongers and mainlanders have always run as a strong undercurrent to the protests, but for many locals in the pro-democracy camp, the political threat from the mainland has now been compounded by a physical threat, also emanating from the mainland.

The Hong Kong Equal Opportunities Commission said that it has received about 600 complaints and inquiries related to discrimination against mainlanders or Mandarin speakers since the outbreak began, compared with “very few” before.

More than 100 restaurants have warned away mainland or Mandarin-speaking patrons.

One hair salon said that it would only cut “Hong Kongers’ hair.”

After police found suspected bombs on a train near the border with the mainland in early February, an anonymous group claimed responsibility on the messaging app Telegram, warning “mainland zombies” that “we can close our checkpoints ourselves.”

The prejudice has been hard to bear for the few mainlanders who joined last year’s pro-democracy movement and tried to help protesters and mainlanders better understand each other. They had faced suspicion then, but it felt like they were united with Hong Kongers in the cause against encroaching CCP rule.

Now, one of them said bitterly, it felt like she was trapped in a “one-sided romance” — one that had become unhealthy.

Before visiting her family’s village in Jiangxi Province for the Lunar New Year holiday in late January, Nannan worried that the Hong Kong police might raid her flat. She hid any incriminating evidence such as spray paint, protective gear and pro-democracy posters.

When she arrived at her parents’ home in the mainland, spending time in their vegetable garden was a welcome change from the crowded towers of tiny apartments in Hong Kong, where she had moved eight years ago for postgraduate study.

Trekking in the mountains with her parents, cooking, going to bed early, made her feel “cordoned off from the world.”

Yet the 31-year-old curator at an arts and culture nonprofit could not talk politics with her family, most of whom are CCP members.

Nannan had learned her lesson in 2014, during previous pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong.

At the time, her father threatened to sever ties, and her mother concluded she had been “brainwashed.”

Nannan, who asked to be identified by her nickname because mainlanders who openly support the Hong Kong protests have faced interrogation and risk arrest if they return home, said that she knew her parents were trying to suppress her beliefs “in the name of love and worry.”

At least she felt safe back home, but she had not been in the village long before medical staff in Hong Kong went on strike, demanding the full closure of the mainland border as the epidemic spread.

Fearing getting stuck in her village for a long time, she bought a ticket on the next train back to Hong Kong. Determined to get back to the territory virus-free, she did not take her mask off to eat or drink during the 10-hour journey, but when she contacted her roommates, they asked her not to come back.

A local friend offered to host her for a few weeks so that she could self-isolate as a precaution. An hour after she arrived, neighbors reported a Mandarin speaker to the landlord.

She was from Singapore, her friend lied.

It worked.

Once settled, Nannan started checking Facebook. A friend shared a meme about a man who once pitied mainlanders living under CCP rule, but now thought it would be better if they were all dead. She scrolled.

“Diseased mainlanders are at our doorstep,” and “colonizers,” the posts read.

“They think mainlanders are not human beings and should die,” she said. “Under this virus, discrimination has been much more open.”

Outside the apartment, the feeling of isolation lingered.

“My friends never excluded me before,” Nannan said. “When I pronounced something wrong, it became a joke. Now, if I say something wrong in Cantonese, it won’t be a happy moment, it will be a dangerous moment.”

Now, for the first time, she is considering leaving Hong Kong, saying: “I suddenly feel very lost.”

Minnie Li, a sociology lecturer at the Education University of Hong Kong, is well known as a protester.

At a 1 million-strong march in June last year, she walked with about 60 mainlanders behind a banner reading: “On the road to democracy, let us walk side by side.”

Days later, she staged a hunger strike with other activists for 90 hours until an ambulance took her to the hospital.

Li, who was born in mainland China, moved to Hong Kong 12 years ago.

She said that she wanted to visit her ill grandmother back in the mainland in January, but her friends and husband urged her to stay because she could have been in danger there.

Her picture had been circulated on a microblogging site, with the caption: “Remember her face and attack her because she is betraying her own country.”

Now she is facing recrimination in the Hong Kong she loves. Even some of her fellow hunger strikers have joined the chorus of fear against mainlanders.

Li has a large Facebook following and received hundreds of negative comments after writing about the trip with Nannan to the Hong Kong restaurant.

“You’re provoking people... No matter what you do, you are a colonist,” she said in trying to summarize the remarks. “You benefit from the national policy that protects the interests of Mandarin speakers. Even if you aren’t consciously supporting them, you are bearing original sin.”

She said that when she spoke Mandarin to a mainland student who needed stitches at a hospital recently, other patients shot them terrified stares, “as if they saw the virus.”

She worries now that Hong Kong’s fight for democracy has become more exclusionary.

“When you say: ‘support the movement,’ you don’t know what you’re supporting now,” Li said. “You have to de-mainland yourself. It’s like some disease.”

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content_text:
BASKETBALL

SBL finals to start

The Super Basketball League (SBL) championship series is to start tomorrow with top-placed Taiwan Beer facing playoff series winners the Yulon Dinos. Eleven Sports is broadcasting the finale of Taiwan’s top basketball league, a best-of-seven series to determine the 2019-2020 title. Taiwan Beer topped the regular-season table with 25-7 ahead of Pauian Archiland (17-15) and the Yulon Dinos (16-16). In the playoff series, the Dinos rampaged on to a surprise three-game sweep of Pauian Archiland last week, with a 103-90 win on Tuesday, a 91-89 thriller on Thursday and a 100-85 triumph on Saturday. The title series is to be played behind closed doors at the Hao Yu Sports Center in New Taipei City, with measures similar to those used for baseball, including close monitoring of body temperatures and the health conditions of players and officials.

BASKETBALL

Bryants’ anniversary marked

Vanessa Bryant on Saturday celebrated the 19th anniversary of her wedding to her late husband, Kobe Bryant, with a touching Instagram post. “My king, my heart, my best friend. Happy 19th wedding anniversary. I miss you so much. I wish you were here to hold me in your arms. I love you,” she wrote, posting a picture of the couple. Five-time NBA champion Bryant and the couple’s 13-year-old daughter, Gianna, were among nine people killed in a helicopter crash in Los Angeles on Jan. 26. Gianna, along with her basketball teammates Payton Chester and Alyssa Altobelli, who also died in the crash, were honored at Friday’s Women’s NBA draft as honorary selections. Vanessa Bryant recorded an emotional message for the draft broadcast, saying that being drafted into the women’s league “would have been a dream come true” for Gianna. After the conclusion of the draft on Friday night, the WNBA announced the creation of the Kobe & Gigi Bryant WNBA Advocacy Award, given to “an individual or group who has made significant contributions to the visibility, perception and advancement of women’s and girls’ basketball at all levels.”

SOCCER

Brighton doubts relegation

There is unlikely to be any relegation from the Premier League if the season ends with no more play possible because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Brighton & Hove Albion owner Tony Bloom told British media. Premier League clubs met on Friday to discuss possible models for finishing the season, but all options remained hypothetical after the British government extended lockdown restrictions for another three weeks. Brighton were two points clear of the relegation zone with nine matches remaining when the league was brought to a halt on March 13. If the season were to end with no more play possible, Liverpool would claim the title and Norwich City, Aston Villa and AFC Bournemouth would drop. Relegation means a financial hit somewhere in the region of US$100 million and Bloom thought it unlikely that the required 70 percent of clubs would vote to send the three teams down. “It would be very difficult to relegate somebody, particularly from the Premier League, if the season hasn’t played out,” Bloom said.

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title: SPORTS BRIEFS


title: Virus Outbreak: Protesters in US decry stay-at-home orders

content_text:
A day after US President Donald Trump encouraged Americans to protest strict public health measures aimed at limiting the spread of COVID-19, new rallies were held in state capitals in Maryland, Texas and Ohio, and more are planned for next week in other states.

Hundreds of people stood shoulder-to-shoulder at the Texas Capitol on Saturday, chanting “Fire Fauci!” as part of a protest organized by the conspiracy theory site InfoWars. Anthony Fauci is the top public health expert on the White House coronavirus taskforce.

In Maryland, protesters stayed inside their cars and honked their horns as they drove around the capital, Annapolis, to demand that Governor Larry Hogan “reopen Maryland.”

A man on Saturday waves the US flag in front of the Hall of Justice Courthouse while protesters rallied in downtown San Diego against California’s stay at home order to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
 Photo: AFP

The protests demanding that state governors reverse shutdown orders have been boosted by rightwing media outlets and by the president, who tweeted on Friday “Liberate Minnesota!” and “Liberate Michigan!” in the wake of a rightwing protest in Michigan that drew thousands of people.

Widespread shutdowns to prevent the spread of coronavirus have left many Americans unemployed, worried that their small businesses would not survive the next few months of the crisis, and afraid of a deepening economic crisis.

People actually taking to the streets, in defiance of social distancing orders and federal guidelines, to protest against public health measures represent a minority opinion, a recent poll showed.

Two-thirds of Americans fear that state governments would lift restrictions on public activity too quickly, compared with only one-third who worry they would not do so quickly enough, a recent Pew Research Center survey of nearly 5,000 American adults showed.

Republicans were evenly divided on the issue, with 51 percent saying that they were concerned about restrictions being lifted too quickly, the poll found.

In Texas, even the InfoWars contributor who organized the rally estimated that it had attracted, at most, a few hundred people.

In Maryland, organizers of the “Reopen Maryland” protest asked supporters to stay in their cars and keep their messaging respectful.

Local news outlets shared footage of streets in Annapolis filled bumper-to-bumper with cars, many of them honking their horns.

Some participants flew US flags and many scrawled protest messages on their windows.

“We are petitioning our governor, Larry Hogan, to immediately reopen our state’s business, educational and religious institutions,” the protest organizers wrote in an online letter, arguing that, while coronavirus was a serious public health concern, “the economic, social and educational disruption caused by shutdowns is guaranteed to cause significant, even greater, harm.”

One local resident who participated in the car protest wrote that he wanted to show up so the governor “hears both sides” of the debate over how long to keep shutdown measures in place, and said he had seen hundreds of other cars participating.

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content_text:
Virus Outbreak: Circus animals caught in lockdown bored, hungry

What do you call a hungry alligator during a coronavirus lockdown? An Italian circus stuck in a car park for two months has the answer: A problem.

The Millennium Circus was supposed to be performing along the Ligurian coast in northern Italy, but the COVID-19 outbreak and a national shutdown of the country stopped it in its tracks.

A kangaroo lies listlessly in its enclosure, while llamas, camels and ponies gather at the fences dividing their respective pens, keeping each other company.

A Circo Millennium staff member feeds some of the circus’ animals on Friday in Savona, Italy, where the group has been stuck since late February after the Italian government imposed a lockdown on the region to try and halt the spread of COVID-19.
 Photo: AFP

Like the rest of the country, they can do little but kill time, while waiting for the potatoes to be handed out.

The 40 animals — parrots, geese, a huge-horned buffalo — and 35 performers and staff were only supposed to be at the vast car park for a few days, before heading up the coast to seaside resorts, but the troupe has been at a standstill since Feb. 20 and has to rely on the help of local associations and animal lovers to feed its beasts.

“They eat about 200 kilos of fodder a day, as well as apples and carrots. And they drink about 1,000 liters of water daily,” artistic director Derek Coda Prin said.

Locals arrive with donated bags of fruit, vegetables, bread or meat.

“At this point, unfortunately, the animals have become a problem,” said Coda Prin, whose family has worked in the circus for five generations.

“They are our life companions, our friends, and we try to look after them in the best possible way, but they’re not like dogs or cats you can give your leftover lunchtime pasta to,” he said.

Paradoxically, among those helping the Millennium Circus is the ENPA, Italy’s national association for the protection of animals, which fights the exploitation of animals in circuses.

Coda Prin said he was worried the virus — believed to have originated in wild animals — might put the paying public off circuses featuring feathered and fanged creatures.

“I think it will have created a bit of a dangerous psychosis for our line of work,” Coda Prin said.

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title: US, UK condemn wave of HK arrests

content_text:
CHINA’S ROLE:
 A series of flip-flops by Carrie Lam’s government on Saturday over the role of Beijing’s two liaison offices in the territory have fueled more controversy

Foreign governments have criticized Saturday’s arrest of 15 Hong Kong democracy activists in a police sweep on charges of organizing and participating in anti-government protests last year.

The arrests were the biggest crackdown on the territory’s pro-democracy movement since the outbreak of mass protests last year.

The International Bar Association said the authorities should not encroach on human rights and the legal system must guard against any abuses of power when the world was preoccupied with the coronavirus pandemic.

Veteran pro-democracy figure and former lawmaker Martin Lee, center, speaks to journalists after walking out of Hong Kong’s Central Police Station on Saturday following his arrest earlier in the day.
 Photo: EPA-EFE

“The United States condemns the arrest of pro-democracy advocates in Hong Kong,” US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said.

“Beijing and its representatives in Hong Kong continue to take actions inconsistent with commitments made under the Sino-British Joint Declaration that include transparency, the rule of law, and guarantees that Hong Kong will continue to ‘enjoy a high degree of autonomy,’” he said.

US lawmakers called on US President Donald Trump to implement the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act passed in November last year.

The act requires annual reviews of Hong Kong’s special status under US law to assess the extent to which China has chipped away at the territory’s autonomy.

US Attorney General William Barr was the latest to weigh in, saying he “condemned the latest assault on the rule of law and the liberty of the people of Hong Kong.”

In Britain, a Foreign Office representative said the government expected any arrests and court procedures to be “conducted in a fair and transparent manner.”

The Foreign Office also said the right to peaceful protest was “fundamental to Hong Kong’s way of life” and authorities should avoid “actions that inflame tensions.”

“The authorities should focus on rebuilding trust through a process of meaningful political dialogue,” the Foreign Office said.

The arrested supporters of the pro-democracy movement included 81-year-old Democratic Party founder and attorney Martin Lee (李柱銘), 71-year-old millionaire publishing tycoon Jimmy Lai (黎智英), 72-year-old former legislator and attorney Margaret Ng (吳靄儀), Democratic Party Chairman and lawmaker Albert Ho (何俊仁) and Legislator “Long Hair” Leung Kwok-hung (梁國雄).

Police said those arrested were aged between 24 and 81, and they were detained on charges of organizing and participating in “unlawful assemblies” on Aug. 18 and Oct. 1 and 20. They also said more arrests were possible.

Those arrested are all due to appear in court on May 18. Some were released on bail late on Saturday.

The Hong Kong government defended the arrests, which the Security Bureau said were carried out in line with the law.

“In Hong Kong, everyone is equal before the law... No one has any special privileges,” a bureau spokesman said.

The International Bar Association condemned the arrests of Lee and Ng, who have been active human rights and rule of law campaigners during their careers.

It was vital that justice was applied transparently in Hong Kong, especially while the world is gripped by the COVID-19 pandemic, it said.

“It is critical that authorities do not use their powers to encroach on fundamental human rights, and it is vital that legal systems continue to protect citizens from any abuse of power which may otherwise be unseen during the COVID-19 crisis in which the international community is submerged,” the group said in a statement.

The Hong Kong Liaison Office of the Central People’s Government released a statement ahead of the arrests that raised new concerns about political pressure from Beijing: It said that it was not bound by a provision of Hong Kong law agreed before the territory’s return to Chinese rule barring Beijing’s interference in local affairs.

The controversy created by that statement deepened after Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam’s (林鄭月娥) government issued a statement on Saturday night that partly contradicted the office’s stance, only to reverse it hours later.

In its third and final statement issued in a four-and-a-half hour period, the Hong Kong government said the work of the liaison office was not limited by Article 22 of the Basic Law.

Meanwhile, across social media, politicians and netizens weighed in on the weekend arrests, with versions of the #Stand With Hong Kong attracting attention globally.

Additional reporting by staff writer and Bloomberg

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