Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Fifty-three demonstrators arrested after ignoring ban on gatherings to mark one year of protests
More than 50 people were arrested in Hong Kong on Tuesday night after thousands of protesters took to the streets in defiance of a police order to mark the first anniversary of the anti-government movement.
Police riot units used pepper spray and repeatedly charged at crowds in an attempt to disperse protesters gathered near the business district of Central, occupying roads and blocking traffic until well after midnight.
The government is reportedly ready to let beer gardens open from 22 June as part of plans drawn up by a group of ministers, dubbed the “Save Summer Six”, who are looking at ways to restart the hospitality industry earlier than initially planned, writes my colleague Rob Davies.
The proposals, first reported in the Financial Times, would allow some of the 27,000 UK pubs that have outdoor space to serve customers for the first time in three months.
UK airline and travel stocks are up, for once, despite the new quarantine rules. The cruise operator Carnival is the biggest riser on the FTSE 100 index, up 14%, while BA owner IAG is 6.9% ahead and easyJet has gained 5.5%.
As reported earlier, Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary said the airline would fly through the 14-day UK quarantine, which he described as “rubbish”. Britain’s three biggest airlines – Ryanair, easyJet and IAG – have begun legal proceedings against the government over the quarantine rules, which they argue are illogical and unfair, and come months late.
The number of confirmed deaths from coronavirus globally has topped 400,000, as the Chinese government released a report lauding its own response to the pandemic that emerged in the city of Wuhan six months ago.
As more countries prepared to continue easing their lockdowns from Monday, Singapore’s prime minister warned the city-state’s citizens that they were entering a tougher world of slowing demand and travel restrictions for the foreseeable future.
China’s national security law has reinvigorated a protest movement that began with opposition to an extradition bill
When Freeman Yim stepped out to join a peaceful demonstration against a controversial extradition bill on 9 June last year, he never knew it would be the start of a drawn-out movement that would plunge Hong Kong into the deepest crisis in its history.
“We weren’t fighting for much, we just wanted Hong Kong to remain Hong Kong and not turn into just any Chinese city,” he said. “We want to have dignity and basic rights. As the Chinese national anthem says, not to become slaves.”
After ‘appalling scenes’ in US and Hong Kong, the shadow foreign secretary attacks UK policy for putting growth and trade ahead of human rights
Britain is “absenting itself from the world stage” by refusing to show leadership over Hong Kong residents, confront China or condemn President Trump over his handling of the fallout from George Floyd’s killing, the shadow foreign secretary has warned.
In her most stinging attack on Britain’s foreign policy, Lisa Nandy said that the government was now displaying “a pattern of behaviour that is becoming very, very troubling”, and that the UK’s actions were being noted by leaders around the world.
Lawmakers from EU parliament and eight other countries create new body
International cooperation is needed to protect democratic values from an increasingly assertive communist China, a new group made up of lawmakers from eight countries and the EU parliament has said.
The legislators, representing parties across the political spectrum, have formed a global alliance, the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, to push their governments to take a stronger stance on relations with the country.
Protesters in Hong Kong have defied a police ban to mark the anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown with a vigil, as the city’s legislature passed a law criminalising the mocking of China’s national anthem. Many fear this year’s commemoration might be Hong Kong’s last, as the proposed imposition of Chinese laws on the special administrative region would prevent and punish activities that threaten national security.
Student protesters and journalists in 1989 recall the joy and hope before the crackdown
It was mid-morning in Tiananmen Square in Beijing on 1 June, 1989. Someone had turned on a boombox playing 80s disco music, and people began to dance. A young couple spins in a small opening in the crowd. The woman smiles slightly, her eyes almost closed, as her partner in a loose dress shirt and blazer turns her. Around them, people are clapping.
It is a photo that captures a side of the pro-democracy movement often overshadowed by what came after – the brutal military crackdownon the evening of 3 June and morning of 4 June. There is no official death toll but activists believe hundreds, possibly thousands, were killed.
Protesters defy police ban as legislation prohibits mockery of Chinese anthem
Thousands of people have defied a police ban in Hong Kong to mourn the victims of the Tiananmen Square massacre, after the city’s legislature passed a law criminalising the mockery of China’s national anthem.
Many fear this year’s commemoration of the events of 4 June 1989 might be Hong Kong’s last, as China has approved a plan to impose national security laws on the semi-autonomous city that would prevent and punish “acts and activities” that threaten national security.
Transportation department says restriction to start 16 June
US wants Beijing to let American carriers resume flights
The US will bar Chinese passenger carriers from flying to the United States starting on 16 June as it pressures Beijing to allow US air carriers to resume flights, the Trump administration announced on Wednesday.
‘Serious representations’ made after worries offer could trigger brain drain from region
China’s foreign ministry has accused Britain of “gross interference” in the country’s affairs after Boris Johnson said he would offer millions of Hong Kong residents a path to UK citizenship if Beijing pushed ahead with a controversial security law for the city.
The ministry’s spokesman Zhao Lijian told Britain to “step back … otherwise there will be consequences” and said China had made “serious representations” to London over its offer to holders of British national (overseas) passports.
China reported one new coronavirus case and four new asymptomatic Covid-19 cases in the mainland on 2 June, the country’s health commission said.
The National Health Commission said the one confirmed case was imported involving a traveller from overseas. Mainland China had five confirmed cases, all of which were imported, and 10 asymptomatic cases for 1 June.
China does not count asymptomatic patients, those who are infected with the coronavirus but not exhibiting symptoms, as confirmed cases.
Total number of infections to date in the mainland stands at 83,021. The death toll remained unchanged at 4,634.
Dan Collyns brings you this action-packed update from Bolivia:
“Thanos is beating us” warned a Bolivian government minister in a live televised press conference on Monday as he called for his compatriots to comply with sanitary measures and lockdown restrictions amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Sweden death rate now higher than France; Pakistan records largest single day rise in new infections; global deaths pass 380,000. This blog is now closed
At least three people were reported dead as coronavirus-hit Mumbai appeared to escape the worst of Cyclone Nisarga Wednesday, the first severe storm to threaten India’s financial capital in more than 70 years, AFP reports.
The city and its surrounds are usually sheltered from cyclones - the last deadly storm to hit the city was in 1948. Authorities had evacuated at least 100,000 people, including coronavirus patients, from flood-prone areas in the states of Maharashtra and Gujarat ahead of Nisarga’s arrival.
The World Health Organization struggled to get needed information from China during critical early days of the coronavirus pandemic, according to recordings of internal meetings that contradict the organisation’s public praise of Beijing’s response to the outbreak.
The recordings, obtained by the Associated Press (AP), show officials complaining in meetings during the week of 6 January that Beijing was not sharing data needed to evaluate the risk of the virus to the rest of the world. It was not until 20 January that China confirmed coronavirus was contagious and 30 January that the WHO declared a global emergency.
Hong Kong police have formally banned this week’s vigil for the Tiananmen Square massacre, citing Covid-19 measures.
The move had been expected, especially after the Hong Kong government extended its ban on public gatherings in groups larger than eight, but the announcement confirms that for the first time since the Chinese military killed untold numbers of protesters on 4 June 1989, there will be no commemorative event.
UK ministers have been accused of not taking seriously the threat posed to black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) Britons by Covid-19, after it was reported that the release of an official review of the issue had been delayed over fears of potential civil unrest.
According to Sky News, officials are concerned about the effect the publication could have amid global anger over the death of George Floyd, an African American man who pleaded for air as a white Minneapolis police officer pressed his knee on his neck.
The Chinese city of Wuhan, where the Covid-19 pandemic began, reported no new asymptomatic cases for the first time on Sunday, according to Chinese health officials.
Mainland China reported 16 new cases overall on Sunday, the highest daily number in three weeks. All were reported as imported cases – 11 in Sichuan province, three in Inner Mongolia, and two in Guangdong.
Cross-party initiative reflects concern response to China’s imposition of security laws cannot be left to Donald Trump
Britain must take the lead in co-ordinating the international response to China’s efforts to impose draconian security laws in Hong Kong, seven former Conservative and Labour UK foreign secretaries have come together to declare.
Bosnia’s state court has ordered the release of a regional prime minister and two other men suspected of corruption in connection with the import of defective ventilators for coronavirus patients.
The court of Bosnia-Herzegovina said their detention was unnecessary, and turned down the prosecution’s requests to detain the three men for 30 days.
Senior public health officials have made a last-minute plea for ministers to scrap Monday’s easing of the coronavirus lockdown in England, warning the country is unprepared to deal with any surge in infection and that public resolve to take steps to limit transmission has been eroded.
The Association of Directors of Public Health said new rules, including allowing groups of up to six people to meet outdoors and in private gardens, were “not supported by the science” and that pictures of crowded beaches and beauty spots over the weekend showed “the public is not keeping to social distancing as it was”.
China has effectively torn up the treaty it signed with the Thatcher government – yet the UK’s response is feeble
To understand how wide Beijing now casts its security net in Hong Kong, consider the case of Martin Lee. Now in his 80s, Lee is a distinguished barrister, a politician and a lifelong defender of civil liberties. He has never committed an act of violence or advocated that others do so.
Last month, in an early sign of what was coming, Lee was arrested at his home. Fourteen other prominent Hong Kong citizens were taken into custody that day and charged with taking part in illegal demonstrations. He has pointed out that he was already facing 14 similar charges in mainland China, and had the extradition law that triggered last year’s protests in Hong Kong been adopted he could have been sent for trial in China under a system that not even the Chinese Communist party’s (CCP) most generous supporters could describe as adequate. The CCP regards rule of law and separation of powers as threats to its power. Law, for the party, is one instrument among many that can be used to eliminate opponents – who can be anyone from dissenting public intellectuals to prominent businessmen.