As rescuers continue to try to save a 10-year-old boy, trapped in a hollow concrete pillar in Vietnam’s Dong Thap province, questions are being asked about who should take responsibility for the accident. As of 6 p.m. Tuesday, rescue teams had still not reached Hao Nam, who fell into the pillar at 11:30 a.m. on Saturday. Although the site had been fenced off with wire, the boy and his friends managed to get in to forage for scrap metal. Hao Nam fell into the 25 centimeter (10 inch) diameter pillar,…
Day: January 3, 2023
Biden, Japan’s Kishida to Meet at White House on Jan. 13
U.S. President Joe Biden will hold talks with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida at the White House on January 13 to discuss North Korea, Ukraine, China’s tensions with Taiwan and a “free and open Indo-Pacific,” the White House said Tuesday. The two leaders will discuss “a range of regional and global issues including the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’s unlawful weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile programs, Russia’s brutal war against Ukraine, and maintaining peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait,” the White House said. The meeting between Washington…
Myanmar Junta Marks Independence Day with Show of Force
Naypyidaw, Myanmar — Myanmar troops and weaponry paraded through the military-built capital Naypyidaw to mark the country’s independence day Wednesday, days after the junta jailed democracy figurehead Aung San Suu Kyi for 33 years. Swaths of the Southeast Asian country have been engulfed by fighting between junta troops and anti-coup rebels since the military seized power almost two years ago. The junta, which recently wrapped up a series of closed-court trials of Suu Kyi, is preparing for fresh elections later this year that the United States has said would be…
How China’s zero-Covid policy triggered a new wave of investor interest in Vietnam
The factory is owned by a Hong Kong company, which asked not to be named because it did not want to give the impression it was leaving the mainland. Established in the 1980s, it had previously based all its production in the Chinese provinces of Guangdong and Jiangxi. In 2019, after the trade war led to increased tariffs on US imports from China, the company decided to expand manufacturing to Vietnam. “Our output is increasing and we hope to build another factory in the near future,” Lee said, pointing to…
Top China Health Official Says COVID Deaths Increasing in ‘Normal’ Range
washington — A top health official in China has said that the fatalities from the latest surge in COVID-19 cases are “increasing” but within the normal range for mortality. In an interview with state broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV), Jiao Yahui, a National Health Commission official, said, “We have a huge base, so what people feel is that the severe cases, the critical cases or the fatalities are increasing. “Relative to the rest of the world, the infection peaks we are faced with across the country are not unusual,” she…
US Man Sentenced for Conspiring to Steal GE Secrets for China
washington — A New York man was sentenced on Tuesday to two years in prison for conspiring to steal General Electric Co.’s trade secrets to benefit China, the U.S. Justice Department said. Xiaoqing Zheng, 59, of Niskayuna, New York, was convicted of conspiracy to commit economic espionage following a four-week jury trial that ended in March last year, according to the Justice Department. U.S. District Judge Mae D’Agostino also sentenced Zheng to pay a $7,500 fine and serve one year of post-imprisonment supervised release. U.S. officials have said the Chinese…
Turkey won’t extradite Uyghurs to China, foreign minister says
Turkey’s Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said his country will not give in to pressure from China to extradite Uyghurs who have Turkish citizenship, even if it has strained their relationship. “Turkish-Chinese ties have suffered over Beijing being disturbed by our attitude on the Turkic Uyghurs issue,” Cavusoglu told reporters at a year-end press briefing in Ankara on Dec. 29, according to Turkish media reports. “They have extradition requests for people who are our citizens, who live in Turkey all the time. Therefore, we don’t grant any such requests,” he said.…
China Denounces Covid Testing Rules Imposed on Its Travelers
The Chinese government on Tuesday denounced Covid testing requirements imposed by other countries on travelers arriving from China as unscientific or “excessive,” and threatened to take countermeasures. As China prepares to open its borders later this week, allowing its citizens to travel abroad for the first time since the pandemic began, countries like Canada, the United States, France, Spain, Japan and the United Kingdom have moved to restrict travelers arriving from the country. The countries have cited concerns about a surge in Covid-19 infections in China, the potential risk of…
China Media Plays Down COVID Severity; WHO Seeks Variant Details
BEIJING/HONG KONG/GENEVA — State media in China played down the severity of a surge of COVID-19 infections on Tuesday, while its scientists briefed the World Health Organization, which has been seeking detailed information about the evolution of the virus. The global body had invited the scientists to present detailed data on viral sequencing at a technical advisory group meeting on Tuesday, and has asked China to share data on hospitalizations, deaths and vaccinations. The WHO would communicate later, probably at a Wednesday news briefing, its spokesperson said after the meeting.…
INTERVIEW: ‘Three years of zero-COVID, and what has it achieved?’
Hu Peng doesn’t have much to celebrate this New Year. His 90-year-old father died of COVID-19 on New Year’s Eve in the northern Chinese city of Tianjin after suffering cardiopulmonary failure. Hu spoke to Radio Free Asia about the harrowing scenes in hospital, as the virus wreaks havoc in Tianjin amid a nationwide wave of sickness and death that has followed the lifting of the zero-COVID policy. “I called the emergency number, 120, but they said there were 90 people ahead of me in the queue,” Hu said. “Eventually they…