Thousands of protesters were in the streets of Bangkok, Thailand, again Saturday in defiance of a government crackdown as they continue to push for the ouster of Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha.  
 
Unlike Friday’s protests, when police used water cannons to disperse thousands of protesters that included children, Saturday’s demonstrations were peaceful.
 
Activists managed to stage a fourth consecutive day of protests, despite government efforts to thwart them through a variety of actions, including shutting down Bangkok’s mass transit systems.
 
Saturday’s protests, which were also held in at least six cities outside Bangkok, got underway despite Prayuth’s declaration of a state of emergency Thursday that banned all political gatherings of five or more people and made all protesters subject to arrest.
 
Many protesters said they were inspired to take action Saturday by the police use of water cannons.  
 
In the past week, police have arrested more than 50 people — including several protest leaders.
 
The Royal Palace has not commented on the protests, but King Maha Vajiralongkorn has said the country needs people who love the monarchy and the country.   
 
Pro-democracy activists began demonstrating three months ago to force the resignation of Prayuth, a former army general who seized power in a 2014 coup that ousted the elected civilian government. He won election to the post last year, but protesters say the vote was rigged in his favor due to constitutional laws drafted by the military.   
 
In addition to demanding reform of the country’s constitution, the demonstrators are seeking to reduce the influence of the Thai monarchy. The institution maintains divine-like status among Thailand’s elite, and it is protected by strict “lese majeste” laws that impose prison sentences on anyone convicted of insulting the monarchy. 
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Back-to-back tropical storms left at least 28 people dead in Vietnam over the past week, raising fears climate change has brought the Southeast Asian country a spike in severe weather.
 
Vietnam lies in one of the world’s five “cyclone centers” and receives an average of 4.3 storms and at least three floods per year, market analysis firm Indochina Research and Consulting estimates. Five other tropical storms have approached Vietnam so far this year.
 
 “The problem isn’t so much a little more damage this year or a little less damage this year,” said Adam McCarty, chief economist with Mekong Economics in Hanoi, “The problem is that it’s trending upwards and this is a climate change problem.”
 
Even in a 2011 report on the country, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization said typhoons, which have winds higher than those of tropical storms, “tend to occur more frequently.”
 
The country of 97 million people is now one of the most “hazard-prone” countries in the world, according to the Climatelinks.org database operated by the U.S. Agency for International Development. It should expect higher temperatures, increased “intensity of extreme weather events” and a rise in sea levels, Climatelinks says.
 
Tropical storm Linfa had killed at least 21 and left 14 others missing as of Sunday as it crossed central Vietnam. The second storm, Nangka, hit the same region Wednesday.  Twenty-eight people were reported dead.
 
Storms this month have damaged at least 25,000 houses and 84,000 hectares of cropland, local media report. They struck an agricultural zone known for rice, coconuts and tropical fruit, often grown in low-lying areas that are likely to flood.FILE – A village is submerged in flood water on the outskirts of Hanoi, Vietnam, July 22, 2018.A landslide at a hydropower dam project in the central Vietnamese province of Thua Thien Hue left 17 workers missing, the ruling Communist Party-run Nhan Dan Online news website reported. Thirteen rescue workers in another province hit by landslides were missing, as well.
 
Landslides strike the mountains every year, said Ralf Matthaes, a long-term expatriate and founder of the Infocus Mekong Research consultancy in Ho Chi Minh City.  
 
“This is common ground,” Matthaes said. “We’re in the middle of the rainy season anyway, so I don’t think it’s anything that’s out of the ordinary.”  
 
Most tropical storms make landfall in central Vietnam, sparing the capital, Hanoi, the financial hub Ho Chi Minh City, and the country’s manufacturing zones. Central parts of the long north-to-south country are relatively poor, meaning shoddier houses with high odds of flooding.
 
The frequency of dangerous storms has made government disaster relief “systematic,” McCarty said. Infrastructure is improving too, while agriculture is becoming more mechanized and people are moving from farms to cities, he added.
 
Most people in the country keep tabs on damage from each big storm and help victims if there’s a way, analysts in Vietnam say, but they’ve grown nonchalant about the threat of new storms.
 
“I think that they are used to the storms,” said Nguyen Thanh Trung, Center for International Studies director at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities in Ho Chi Minh City. “In Vietnam, when we hear about the storms in the news on social media, the first things we pay attention to are the consequences and the aftermath.”
 
People in relatively well-off Ho Chi Minh City monitor the media for storm aftermath news partly so they can donate to victims, Nguyen said. Donation processes have become routinized in Vietnam because of the regularity of storms, he said.
 
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Thailand’s prime minister dismissed calls for his resignation Friday as protesters defied a ban to rally in the capital, Bangkok, for the second day amid a violent police crackdown.
Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha declared a state of emergency in response to the civil strife led by students, who are demanding his resignation and reforms to the country’s constitutional monarchy.Thailand’s Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha speaks during a news conference after a cabinet meeting at the Government House in Bangkok, Sept. 22, 2020.
Prayuth said Friday the measure was necessary because “certain groups of perpetrators intended to instigate an untoward incident and movement in the Bangkok area by way of various methods and via different channels, including causing obstruction to the royal motorcade.”
He said Friday he had no plans to resign as he had done nothing wrong. He said his government hopes it can drop the state of emergency ahead of its normal 30-day duration “if the situation improves quickly.”
To quell the protests, police armed with water cannons laced with a chemical irritant charged at the crowd, dispersing protesters, onlookers and reporters. Journalists who were hit by the water said it caused a stinging sensation and was dyed blue, to mark protesters for possible later arrest.
Prayuth is a former army general who seized power in a 2014 coup that ousted the elected civilian government. He won election to the post last year, but protesters say the vote was rigged in his favor because of laws drafted by the military.
In addition to changes to the constitution drafted by the military, the demonstrators are also seeking to reduce the influence of the Thai monarchy. The institution maintains divinelike status among Thailand’s elite, and is protected by strict “lese majeste” laws, which imposes prison sentences for anyone convicted of insulting the king.People cover themselves with umbrellas during anti-government protests, in Bangkok, Thailand, Oct. 16, 2020.
Protesters shouted at a motorcade carrying King Maha Vajiralongkorn and Queen Suthida as it drove past a crowd Wednesday and held up a three-fingered salute, a symbol of defiance borrowed from the popular U.S. Hunger Games books and film trilogy.
A number of protest leaders have been rounded up since the state of emergency went into effect. On Friday another two activists were arrested under a law covering violence against the queen for their alleged part in the heckling of the motorcade. They could face up to life in prison if convicted.
The Ministry of Digital Economy also announced it would pursue cases against five Twitter accounts and five Facebook accounts for inviting people to attend Friday’s rally, an action deemed illegal under the state of emergency, as well as other laws.
The legal aid group Thai Lawyers for Human Rights said at least 51 people have been arrested since Tuesday in connection with the protests. 
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Taiwan’s fishery regulator this week rebuked last month’s U.S. inclusion of Taiwan-caught fish for the first time in its list of goods produced by forced labor, saying the move inflicts “unfair” harm on law-abiding producers, although fisher advocacy groups disagree.  The U.S. Labor Department Sept. 30 added fish from Taiwan to the latest edition of its “List of Goods Produced by Child Labor or Forced Labor,” required under 2005 U.S. legislation.  Taiwan has a distant-water fishing fleet of more than 1,100 vessels, the world’s second largest after China, with an annual output value of $1.4 billion. Fisheries Agency figures show the island employs about 32,000 migrant fishers, mostly from Indonesia and the Philippines, 20,000 of whom work aboard Taiwan-flagged distant-water vessels.  FILE – A fisherman reels in nets in a fishing marina shared with the naval base harbor in Suao, Taiwan, Dec. 5, 2012.While pledging to investigate the environmental group’s accusations, Taiwan’s Fisheries Agency said it hopes to reverse the U.S. decision by presenting evidence showing Taiwan-flagged distant-water vessels comply with the relevant International Labor Organization fishing convention.  Tainted reputation Lin Ding-rong, director of the agency’s deep-sea fisheries division, told VOA on Monday the inclusion has hurt Taiwanese suppliers’ reputation and their distant-water catch, although their U.S.-bound exports would not be immediately affected.  “This has negatively impacted U.S. buyers’ [confidence] in sourcing catch [from Taiwan]. Frankly, we disagree with the U.S. decision, which was based on offenses by one or a few vessels but will largely hurt the interests of the majority of law-abiding fishermen here,” Lin told VOA by phone.  Two industry representatives also complained to VOA that the inclusion has stigmatized the island’s entire fishing industry, where they said a few rotten apples spoiled the barrel. “If up to 98%, 99% of us have progressed significantly, no such stigma should be left to us. I think it is unfair to us and the [Taiwan] government should speak up on behalf of us,” Edward Huang, secretary-general of the fishermen’s association in the southern port city of Kaohsiung, told VOA by phone.  FILE – Taiwanese fishermen wave on a fishing boat as they operate on waters near Ishigaki island, Okinawa prefecture, in this photo taken by Kyodo, May 10, 2013.Taiwan’s inclusion in the list could subject U.S. companies sourcing fish from Taiwan to U.S. customs scrutiny.  Lin pointed to a new law that includes provisions to limit work hours, protect wages, and improve living conditions for workers, as well as setting out conditions that would require the dispatch of inspectors to crack down on illegal fishing and forced labor.  Lin also said his agency is working to overcome technical difficulties in installing electronic monitoring systems or wireless networks on ships to allow it to keep tabs on conditions on board.   Inclusion called justified Seven organizations promoting migrant fisher rights in Taiwan, however, insisted that Taiwan-linked distant-water vessels’ mistreatment of laborers – confiscation of documents, excessive overtime, physical and verbal abuse and underpayment – justifies the inclusion. Chiu Shao-chi, of the Environmental Justice Foundation, welcomed the agency’s moves to adopt high-tech steps to initiate more progress but said recent findings of her foundation’s interviews with fishers from Indonesia were in line with Greenpeace East Asia’s discoveries of illegal fishing and forced labor among the crew on board three vessels flagged or linked to Taiwan, as well as conclusions of the U.S. Labor Department’s biennial report. In its report, the Labor Department cited one worker who said that he received $50 a month after numerous fees were deducted from his monthly salary of $450. Another worker said that he was forced to fish for 16 to 18 hours a day and sometimes up to 34 hours straight if no fish were caught. Greenpeace East Asia attributed the continuing risk of abuse and forced labor aboard Taiwanese vessels to lack of oversight.  Chiu agreed, saying “as far as fishing vessels are concerned, there lacks a [designated] labor department [in Taiwan] to oversee or implement mandatory labor inspections regularly on ships.” She also endorsed Greenpeace East Asia’s conclusions that migrant fishers in Taiwan are still discriminated against by the two-tier recruitment. Under that system, migrant fishers hired overseas usually are disqualified from labor protections, including minimum wages, to which those hired onshore in Taiwan are entitled. She said it’s unclear, though, whether it is the recruitment agencies in Taiwan or those in the source country who had exploited the laborers by withholding their wages — a practice barred in Taiwan. No sweatshop seafood Chiu, however, urged Taiwanese fishing employers to work with the government to develop a mechanism to provide overtime pay or ensure the island exports no sweatshop seafood.      Greenpeace East Asia, in particular, called on Taiwan-based Fong Chun Fishery Co., one of the world’s top three tuna traders, with strong market links to Japan, America and the Europe, to “take more proactive and progressive actions, including enhancing the traceability of the seafood supply chain; source only from vessels that do not take part in transhipments at sea; and strictly uphold with international standards on human and labor rights and best practices.”  FILE – Fishermen rest after tying their boats at the northeast fishing port in Yilan, Taiwan, July 7, 2016.Transhipment involves transferring catches to refrigerated cargo ships, which facilitates overfishing and has been linked to serious abuses of human and workers’ rights at sea since these remote vessels make fewer port calls and thus skirt inspections. At least two of three Taiwan-linked vessels — whose catches were seized in May and August at U.S. customs on suspicions of forced labor, shark finning or illegal transhipment — were suppliers to Fong Chun Fishery, which in January acquired bankrupt American seafood company Bumble Bee.  In its defense, Fong Chun Fishery told VOA in an emailed reply the company has complied with all laws and regulations both at home and abroad and “all transshipments are made under the supervision of onboard inspectors, [assigned by regional fisheries management organizations]. Fishery regulators of the countries where the vessels are registered are informed before the transshipments are made.”  And the company has no longer worked with suppliers once they were found to have been involved in illegal fishing, it said. Industry insider: More work needed Taiwan may have made progress in reforming its fishery regulation in recent years, but more needs to be done to improve its record of upholding rights of migrant workers, an industry insider, who previously worked for the island’s fishery regulator, told VOA on the condition of anonymity. He said given the harsh nature of distant-water fishing, local fishers have kept turning away from working onboard, leaving vacancies for migrant workers to fill in. The headache won’t go away if the problem of labor exploitation isn’t eventually addressed, he said. To start off, he suggests fishing companies to compensate crew onboard for working overtime or add manpower to work in shifts. Chen Chun-sheng, secretary-general of Suao Fishermen’s Association in northern Taiwan, said that adding manpower onboard isn’t feasible given the limited space on the ships and extra cost burden. However, compensation for overtime is reasonable on the condition that fishing companies have profits to share, he said. Therefore, an employee bonus scheme may be a win-win cure for the island’s distant-water fishing industry, he said. 
 
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China has warned Canada not to grant political asylum to Hong Kong pro-democracy protesters, labeling them violent criminals and saying the action would constitute interference in China’s internal affairs.Chinese Ambassador to Canada Cong Peiwu said Thursday that “if the Canadian side really cares about the stability and the prosperity in Hong Kong, and really cares about the good health and safety of those 300,000 Canadian passport-holders in Hong Kong, and the large number of Canadian companies operating in Hong Kong SAR [Special Administrative Region], you should support those efforts to fight violent crimes.”Canadian Foreign Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne called Cong’s statement “totally unacceptable and disturbing.””I have instructed Global Affairs to call the ambassador in to make clear in no uncertain terms that Canada will always stand up for human rights and the rights of Canadians around the world,” Champagne said in a statement published by Canadian news organizations.Earlier this week, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau strongly criticized Beijing for “coercive diplomacy” and for the crackdowns in Hong Kong and on Uighur Muslims in China’s Xinjiang region.At his press briefing Thursday, Cong countered Trudeau’s comments, saying there was no coercive diplomacy on the Chinese side, adding that “the Hong Kong issue and the Xinjiang-related issue are not about the issue of human rights. They are purely about internal affairs of China, which brooks no interference from the outside.”Protests of Hong Kong’s pro-Beijing government and the Chinese government continued in the city for months last year and resulted in a new national security law for Hong Kong that took effect June 30.The law punishes secessionist movements, subversive or terrorist acts, and what it interprets as collusion with foreign forces intervening in the city’s affairs.Western powers, including the United States, Britain and Canada have strongly condemned the law and have accused China of infringing on Hong Kong’s freedoms.
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Having contained its first brush with the novel coronavirus even as infections in neighboring countries surged, Myanmar is now straining to check a soaring second wave with a health care system blighted by decades of neglect under military rule.In early August, the Southeast Asian country of 54 million was still going days without logging a single new COVID-19 infection and had only 374 total confirmed cases by the middle of the month. Cases have skyrocketed since then, however, to more than 31,000 as of Oct. 14, according to Johns Hopkins University’s Coronavirus Resource Center in the U.S.Myanmar logged 2,158 cases on Oct. 10, its highest daily count to date. COVID-related deaths have also jumped, from just six as of Sept. 3 to 732.Local reports say monasteries, schools and government offices are being repurposed as quarantine facilities to help share the load with a creaking public health care system, and that patients who have tested positive for the virus have been forced to share rooms with those who have not.World Health Organization country representative Dr. Stephan Jost called this an “emergency period” for Myanmar.’Turning point’Critics have accused authorities of being slow to take the virus seriously. Well into March, government spokesperson Zaw Htay told reporters the country was still case-free because of people’s lifestyle and diet.But Jost insisted Myanmar was on top of the pandemic starting in early January, banning flights from Wuhan, China, where it began, by the end of the month, canceling visas-on-arrival for visitors from all of China on Feb. 1, and setting up a powerful committee — later led by State Councilor Aung San Suu Kyi — to coordinate the government’s response.He said the “turning point” came in mid-August when a communal transmission case was detected in Sittwe, capital of the far western state of Rakhine, which borders Bangladesh, where major outbreaks were well underway.”And it’s really from then on that this second wave was, if you like, culminating into a very big challenge for the country, which it continues to be,” said Jost.Confirmation took a few days, he added, which “means that there was transmission happening a few days before that. And this also showed that with the continuing communication, say, by domestic flights, the potential of spread from Sittwe to practically every other part of Myanmar via Yangon [Myanmar’s commercial hub] is obviously there. And that is borne out by the transmission pattern that we have been seeing since.”Cases of COVID-19 have been confirmed in the capital, Naypyitaw, and 13 of the country’s 14 states and regions.Jost said Myanmar’s success keeping the first wave relatively small may have lulled authorities into lowering their guard, making way for the second. Lockdown orders on Yangon and elsewhere were lifted by the end of June.”Perhaps some of the measures were relaxed a little early, like we’ve seen in other places, without the virus actually having gone away,” he said.Given how infectious the novel coronavirus is, though, and how threadbare the public health care system Myanmar had to meet it with, Jost said the latest wave was to some degree “almost inevitable.”Myanmar is one of the poorest countries in the region. The WHO ranked its heath care system the worst in the world overall in 2000, the last time the U.N. agency published a global index. For the next decade the military junta spent less than 2% of Myanmar’s gross domestic product on health care per year on average, World Bank Figures show. Spending on health care only began to rise after the country started transforming into a quasi-democracy in 2011.LockdownEven so, the second wave might have been smaller had the government locked down Rakhine sooner than it did, said Joshua Poole, country director for Catholic Relief Services, a U.S.-based charity.Within a week of detecting the communal transmission case in mid-August, the government had locked down Sittwe, followed by a few more townships and the entire state by the end of the month.”It just wasn’t fast enough,” said Poole, who is also a member of the steering committee of Myanmar’s International Non-Governmental Organization Forum, which has been working with the government in responding to the pandemic.He believes a quicker return of stay-at-home orders in Yangon, which came in late September, would likely have helped even more.Most COVID-19 cases are now being found in greater Yangon, Myanmar’s most populous region, with more than 8 million residents, and also its most densely packed.”It took a while to get back to the point where there was the stay-at-home orders, and I think that’s really what caused the cases to blow up in Yangon,” said Poole.Considering that the population has been following authorities’ diktats fairly closely, he added, “if the government would have done that a week or two earlier then, you know, I think that would have helped quite a bit.”On the whole, though, Jost and Poole have been impressed with the government’s response to the pandemic, given the budget and health care staff it has to work with, and said the outbreak was not yet out of control.Jost has been especially impressed by the rapid rate at which Myanmar has been ramping up its testing capacity, from “literally zero” at the start to between 10,000 and 15,000 a day now, one reason for the rising infection numbers.That may not yet be enough, though. Poole said the government was reporting positivity rates of between 15% and 19%, suggesting that transmission was also high and that many infections were still not being caught. Countries that have managed to test a much larger share of their populations and started to bring their own outbreaks under control tend to report positivity rates of around 5% or less.Eyes on RakhinePoole said more and faster testing will be key for Myanmar to turn the corner. That’s tough enough in Yangon. It will be harder still in Rakhine, where the second wave started and infections are also mounting.Intense fighting between the military and Arakan Army, an ethnic armed group that wants autonomy for Rakhine, has consumed the north of the state since late 2019, killing hundreds and displacing many thousands into dangerously crowded camps.The International Crisis Group, a global research and advocacy nonprofit, warned that the conflict was a “potential health disaster” in May. Richard Horsey, a senior advisor to the group based in Myanmar, said the fighting has only picked up since then, putting added strain on the local health system and making it all the harder to test and see how the virus is spreading.”It just isn’t possible to roll out the kind of public health measures and responses that you need to do in a context of conflict,” he said.”Although Yangon is currently the focus of a lot of effort because of the large number of cases there, it’s very important that the public health authorities and the government don’t take their eye off Rakhine state,” he added.Myanmar’s Health and Sports Ministry did not reply to VOA’s repeated requests for an interview.
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Australian authorities on Thursday dropped an investigation into a journalist accused of receiving classified information to produce a report on alleged troop misconduct in Afghanistan, the second media probe dismissed amid concerns over press freedom.
 
The Australian Federal Police (AFP) said it believed it had “reasonable prospects of conviction” but the prosecutor’s office wanted the investigation into Australia Broadcasting Corp (ABC) journalist Daniel Oakes dropped as there was no public interest in continuing.
 
“The public interest does not require a prosecution in the particular circumstances of this case,” the AFP said in a statement.
 
The decision closes an anxious chapter for Australian media outlets which last year decried raids on the ABC head office and the home of a News Corp newspaper editor over successive days in relation to stories they had run.
 
The ABC had said the investigation into its reporter was in relation to 2017 stories about alleged troop misconduct in Afghanistan, and involved the police examining some 9,000 computer files at the state-funded broadcaster.
 
“While we welcome this decision, we also maintain the view the matter should never have gone this far,” ABC managing director David Anderson said in a statement on Thursday.
 
“This whole episode has been both disappointing and disturbing.”
 
The AFP dropped its case against the News Corp editor in May due to insufficient evidence after a court ruled the warrant used to raid the journalist’s home was invalid.
 
“No journalist should have to endure what @DanielMOakes went through for more than two years,” said Marcus Strom, president of the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance in a tweet.
 
“Laws that criminalise national security reporting remain on the books. We need urgent reform.”
 
Oakes, the ABC reporter, retweeted a post from the broadcaster’s director of news, Gaven Morris, which described the decision as “justice at long last”. 
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A U.S. warship sailed through the Taiwan Strait in what the American military described as a “routine” passage Wednesday, but enraging China, which claims sovereignty over the island and surrounding seas.Ties between Beijing and Washington have deteriorated in recent months over issues including trade and Hong Kong, with the self-ruled island of Taiwan a long-running source of tension.The guided-missile destroyer USS Barry passed through the Strait on Oct. 14, according to a statement by the U.S. Pacific Fleet.”The ship’s transit through the Taiwan Strait demonstrates the U.S. commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific,” the statement said.”The U.S. Navy will continue to fly, sail and operate anywhere international law allows,” it added.Any U.S. Navy operations in the Taiwan Strait, which separates China from the island, provoke a strong response from Beijing, which considers Taiwan to be an inviolable part of its territory.In an angry riposte, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army said it tracked the USS Barry by sea and air “throughout the entire process.””We warn the U.S. to stop its words and deeds that provoke trouble and disturb the situation in the Taiwan Strait,” Eastern Theatre Command spokesperson Colonel Zhang Chunhui said.The island has been governed separately since the end of a civil war in China in 1949.Taiwan has its own flag, currency and military, but it is not recognized as an independent nation by the U.N.Washington ended its diplomatic relations with Taipei in 1979 in order to improve ties with China, but the U.S. remains the island’s most powerful ally and its main arms supplier.The Chinese have threatened to use force if Taipei proclaims independence or if there is foreign intervention.Beijing views the passage of foreign vessels through the Strait as a violation of its sovereignty.Washington and many other countries, on the other hand, see the waterway as part of international waters and therefore open to all. 
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Vietnam’s journalists and social media users face a new obstacle to independent reporting through a government decree that imposes harsh penalties for sharing information deemed harmful to the country.Observers and rights activists see the decree, due to go into effect Dec. 1, as part of Hanoi’s increasing efforts to tighten control over the news media.Since January, Vietnam Vietnamese journalist Pham Doan Trang was awarded a 2019 Press Freedom Prize for Impact, Sept. 12, 2019, in Berlin. “I hope this award will encourage the Vietnamese people to engage more in press freedom,” she told VOA Vietnamese.FILE – Vietnamese television anchor Hoang Phuong works in a studio of VTC Television during a news program in Hanoi, Vietmam, May 2, 2018.Vo said the decree appears part of a consistent policy by the government to “always stifle press freedom.”“The Vietnamese press is not the same as overseas. The country is governed by one-party rule. It does not accept pluralism or multiparty. It does not accept criticism,” Vo said. “They explicitly and unequivocally declare that the press is a propaganda tool of the party and state.”Vietnam has a poor record for free media, ranking 175 out of 180 countries, where 1 is the most free, on an annual index compiled by media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF).RSF said the “level of terror has risen sharply in the past two years, with many citizen-journalists being jailed or expelled in connection with their posts.”Journalists at state-run and state-approved outlets have to register and meet certain requirements, such as having a press card and press activity permit. Because of that, bloggers and independent journalists like Vo often use social media platforms to publish reporting.But independent journalists, such as Pham Doan Trang, who was jailed earlier this month, are at greater risk of arrest.FILE – Press releases are pictured on April 25, 2018, in Paris during a press conference of Reporters Without Borders (RSF) to present its World Press Freedom Index.The journalist’s Oct. 6 arrest “is another leap forward into an outright crackdown by the Communist Party of Vietnam,” Daniel Bastard, the head of RSF’s Asia-Pacific desk, told VOA Vietnamese.“RSF is appalled by the arrest of Pham Doan Trang, who was honored with our Press Freedom Award for Impact exactly one year ago. Her only crime was to provide her fellow citizens with trustful information and enable them to fully exercise their rights,” Bastard said.Pham, an outspoken democracy activist and author, was arrested on anti-state propaganda charges, police and state media said.Rights groups condemned the arrest, which took place hours after annual U.S.-Vietnam human rights talks, and they warned that the blogger risked torture in custody.Pham, who was arrested at an apartment in Ho Chi Minh City, is accused of “making, storing, distributing or disseminating information, documents and items against the Socialist Republic of Vietnam,” To An Xo, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Public Security, said.The blogger writes about legal issues, citizen rights and politics, and in September he released a joint investigative report into a government attack on a village that was the center of a land dispute.The U.S. State Department expressed concern over Pham’s arrest.“Her detention could impact freedom of expression in Vietnam. We urge the Vietnamese government to ensure its actions and laws are consistent with Vietnam’s international obligations and commitments,” the State Department said in a statement sent to VOA via email.This story originated in VOA’s Vietnam Service.
 
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Scientists have discovered that Australia’s Great Barrier Reef lost more than half of its coral populations between 1995 and 2017.  Researchers at the The Great Barrier Reef stretches across 2,300 kilometers down Australia’s northeastern coast and is home to a wide variety of marine life, making it the world’s largest coral reef ecosystem. The region was named a World Heritage Site by UNESCO (U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) in 1981. 
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A Russian attempt to broker a cease-fire to end the worst outbreak of hostilities over the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh in more than a quarter-century has failed to get any traction, with rivals Azerbaijan and Armenia trading blame for new attacks. The failure of the truce that was supposed to begin Saturday reflects the uncompromising positions of the two South Caucasus nations that have stymied decades of diplomatic efforts. The escalation of fighting raises the specter of a wider conflict that could draw in Russia and Turkey and threaten Caspian Sea energy exports.   A look at some military and geopolitical aspects of the conflict and its potential fallout: Roots of the conflict   Nagorno-Karabakh, populated mostly by Armenians, was an autonomous region inside Azerbaijan during the Soviet era. Historic tensions between Christian Armenians and mostly Muslim Azerbaijanis, fueled by memories of the 1915 massacre of 1.5 million Armenians by Ottoman Turks, exploded in the final years of the Soviet Union.   In 1988, the region sought to join Armenia, triggering hostilities that morphed into an all-out war as the USSR collapsed in 1991. By the time a 1994 cease-fire ended the fighting, an estimated 30,000 people had been killed and up to 1 million were displaced. Armenian forces not only held Nagorno-Karabakh itself but also seized substantial chunks of land outside the territory’s borders. Nagorno-Karabakh, a forested, mountainous territory that covers about 4,400 square kilometers (1,700 square miles), the size of the U.S. state of Delaware, has run its own affairs ever since, relying on Armenia’s support. Failed peace initiatives   Ever since Armenian forces routed Azerbaijani troops in the war, international mediators have sought a political settlement.  Russia, the United States and France, which co-sponsored the Nagorno-Karabakh peace talks under the aegis of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, have put forward numerous peace initiatives, but Armenia’s stiff resistance to surrendering any land has been a key stumbling block.   Azerbaijan, meanwhile, has relied on its oil wealth to modernize its military and now argues that it has the right to reclaim its land by force after nearly three decades of failed international mediation. Military disparity  While separatist forces in the Nagorno-Karabakh and the Armenian military continue to rely mostly on aging Soviet-built weapons, Azerbaijan has completely revamped its arsenal with state-of-the-art attack drones and powerful long-range multiple rocket systems supplied by its neighbor and ally, Turkey.   More than two weeks of fighting has shown that Azerbaijan has clearly outgunned the Nagorno-Karabakh forces and put them on the defensive. Azerbaijani troops have made significant advances in several areas around Nagorno-Karabakh and showered its towns with rockets and artillery shells. Armenian forces have countered with Soviet-built howitzers, antiquated BM-21 rocket launchers and obsolete Tochka-U missiles that lack the punch and precision of Azerbaijan’s more modern weapons.A woman stands inside her damaged house two days after shelling by Armenian’s artillery during fighting over the separatist region of Nagorno-Karabakh, in Ganja, Azerbaijan, Oct. 13, 2020.Turkey’s new role   Unlike previous outbursts of hostilities over Nagorno-Karabakh, NATO-member Turkey, which has close ethnic, cultural and historic bonds with Azerbaijan, took a higher profile and vowed to help Azerbaijan reclaim its territory. Turkey’s newly assertive role reflects President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ambitions to expand his nation’s clout.   Armenian officials say Turkey is directly involved in the conflict and is sending Syrian mercenaries to fight on Azerbaijan’s side. Turkey has denied deploying combatants to the region, but a Syrian war monitor and Syria-based opposition activists have confirmed that Turkey has sent hundreds of Syrian opposition fighters to fight in Nagorno-Karabakh. Armenian authorities also charge that Turkey provides Azerbaijan with intelligence and even air cover, claiming that a Turkish F-16 fighter jet shot down an Armenian warplane. Turkey and Azerbaijan have denied the claim, but Azerbaijan’s president admitted that Turkish F-16s have stayed on in Azerbaijan weeks after a joint military exercise. He insisted that they have remained grounded. Conflicting goals   While Armenia aims to preserve the 1994 status quo in the region and desperately needs a cease-fire to contain the damage and regroup, Azerbaijan, with Turkey’s blessing, clearly is bracing for a long fight, hoping to bleed Armenia and force it to make concessions.   The escalation of fighting is a major challenge for Russia, which has a military base in Armenia but also has sought to maintain good ties with Azerbaijan and avoid a showdown with Turkey. Russia and Turkey have learned to accommodate mutual interests in Syria and Libya and have developed strong economic ties, but the fighting in Nagorno-Karabakh could now shatter their alliance.   Azerbaijan and Turkey have accepted Russia’s mediation and grudgingly agreed to a truce, but they have made it clear that see the cease-fire as temporary until Armenia agrees to pull back its forces from Nagorno-Karabakh. Looming escalation Landlocked Armenia, emaciated by three decades of Turkish and Azerbaijani blockades, lacks resources for a drawn-out conflict. But it can’t be expected to yield to pressure. Patriotic sentiments run high, and Armenians of all trades and ages have volunteered to go the front lines. If Armenian forces in Nagorno-Karabakh start losing ground, Armenia could raise the stakes in the conflict by recognizing the separatist region’s independence — something it hasn’t done yet — and openly challenging Azerbaijan militarily. So far, Armenian officials have denied making any strikes on Azerbaijan from its territory, a claim contested by Azerbaijan.   Armenia has several high-precision Iskander surface-to-surface missile systems supplied by Russia. It hasn’t used the powerful weapon yet, but it could be tempted to if Armenian forces face the prospect of losing Nagorno-Karabakh.   Armenian authorities so far have vowed not to target Azerbaijan’s infrastructure, including an oil pipeline carrying its Caspian crude to Turkey and on to Western markets, but their calculus may change if Armenian forces in Nagorno-Karabakh are cornered. If the Armenian forces target the strategic pipeline, Azerbaijan could also up the ante.   During the previous escalation of hostilities between Armenia and Azerbaijan in July, Azerbaijan’s Defense Ministry boasted of its state-of-the-art missile systems that are capable of striking Armenia’s Metsamor nuclear power plant — a threat the Armenian authorities at the time denounced as “genocidal.” If Azerbaijan openly strikes Armenian territory, Moscow would be obliged by its military pact with Yerevan to intervene militarily to protect its ally. Turkey could hardly be expected to stay idle too. 
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Chinese nationalists erupted in anger at South Korean boy band BTS after its leader thanked Korean War veterans for their sacrifices. The singer, who goes by RM, made the remark in a recorded acceptance speech for an award from the Korea Society for promoting U.S.-Korean relations. “We will always remember the history of pain that our two nations shared together and the sacrifices of countless men and women,” RM said in the speech, which included no mention of China. “After 70 years, the world we are living in is much closer than before. Boundaries in many aspects are getting more blurred,” RM said. “As members of the global community, we should build a deeper understanding and solidarity to be happier together.” Chinese internet users and state media took RM’s comments as a slap at China, whose soldiers fought alongside North Korean forces during their failed attempt to annex South Korea in the 1950-53 war. They accused RM of ignoring the role played by China in the war, which Chinese Communist Party propaganda blames on the United States, instead of North Korean leader Kim Il Sung’s attack on South Korea. “Before, I thought some BTS songs were pretty good. Now, they seem to be covered in excrement,” said a commenter on the microblog service Sina Weibo. “Insulting China is absolutely not allowed.” An account titled “BTS Insults China” had been viewed more than 4.5 million times, according to Sina Weibo. “Many Chinese netizens pointed out that the speech plays up to U.S. netizens, but the country played the role of aggressor in the war,” said an article in the Global Times newspaper, controlled by the Chinese Communist Party. Asked about the controversy, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson, Zhao Lijian, said, “What I want to say is that it should be our common pursuit to take history as a mirror, face the future, cherish peace and promote friendship.” Last year, Chinese state TV suspended broadcasts of National Basketball Association games after the general manager of the Houston Rockets expressed support for anti-government protesters in Hong Kong. Broadcasts resumed this week. Since the Korean War, Beijing has helped prop up isolated North Korea with gifts of oil and other aid to maintain a buffer between China and U.S.-allied South Korea. Online Chinese fan groups demanded an apology from BTS and called for boycotts of an upcoming album and promotional events. BTS-related products were missing this week from the online stores of Samsung Electronics and sports brand FILA on Chinese e-commerce websites including Alibaba Group’s TMall and JD.com.  Global brands have tried to distance themselves from politically touchy issues, especially Taiwan, the self-ruled island claimed by Beijing as part of its territory, and Hong Kong, the scene of pro-democracy protests. In 2016, Taiwan-born Korean pop singer Chou Tzu-yu apologized for shaking a Taiwanese flag on South Korean TV after criticism by China. BTS has yet to respond, but South Korean fans reacted angrily. “BTS fans are from all over the world, so China’s bullying will be known to all countries that took part in the Korean War,” said Johnny Kim, a South Korean engineer. The row comes ahead of Thursday’s stock market debut of BTS’s management company, Big Hit Entertainment. Hong Kong’s most prominent dissident, Joshua Wong, weighed in, criticizing Beijing for “provoking groundless rage and division.” “There are still many Korean War veterans around the world, including those from the United States, so it’s not reasonable for China to pick a fight over this,” said Min-seong Lee, a student in Seoul. 
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