Authorities in Thailand arrested a student pro-democracy protest leader Friday after he led demonstrations last month calling for government reforms and an end to military influence on politics.The arrest of Parit “Penguin” Chiwarak, 22, was documented in a video apparently shot by a friend and posted to Parit’s Facebook page. In the video, police can be heard reading charges to him related to a July 18 protest before he was physically carried to a police car. Authorities took him into custody just outside Bangkok while Parit was traveling to a protest.This handout from the Royal Thai Government taken and released on Aug. 13, 2020 shows Thailand’s Prime Minister Prayut Chan-ocha speaking after a cabinet meeting at the Government House in Bangkok.The July 18 protest and almost daily rallies that have taken place around the country since are a reaction to a disputed election last year that kept junta leader Prayuth Chan-ocha as prime minister five years after he first took power in a 2014 army coup.Hours after Parit’s arrest, hundreds of students gathered at Chulalongkorn University in central Bangkok for a previously planned anti-government rally. Speakers called for a new constitution and for the government to resign.Students went ahead with the rally despite a ban by the university, which said it was given too little notice to adequately ensure student safety.Prime Minister Prayuth has responded to the student-led protests by appealing for unity. In a televised address Thursday, the prime minister urged citizens to “say ‘no’ to the politics of hate and division and to the politics that spread the disease of tribalism of ‘belief versus belief’, or ‘young versus old’, or ‘rich versus poor.’”The student protest groups plan to stage a large protest on Sunday to intensify their demand to reform the military-backed constitution and call for new elections.
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New Zealand is extending a nationwide lockdown after more COVID-19 infections were detected.  Four mystery cases diagnosed in Auckland on Tuesday were the first to have been locally transmitted in more than 100 days.  Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern expects more infections to emerge in the coming days.  Auckland, New Zealand’s biggest city, will be subject to a level 3 coronavirus lockdown, while the rest of the country will remain at level 2.The emergency centers on a cluster of cases in Auckland.  The origin of the infections is still being investigated.  Thirty-eight people are in government quarantine.  New Zealand’s biggest city will remain under level 3 coronavirus restrictions until later this month, at least. Bars, restaurants and schools are shut, and most workers forced to stay at home.  The rest of New Zealand, a country of five million people, is on a level two lockdown in a four-tier alert system, which means public gatherings are limited to 100 people and strangers must physically distance. Prime minister Jacinda Ardern says her cautious approach is warranted as the Covid-19 outbreak gets worse.   “It will grow before it slows, and it may continue to be linked to schools, churches and social gatherings as it has done to date,” she said. ” In keeping with our precautionary approach and New Zealand’s philosophy of going hard and going early, today the Cabinet has agreed to maintain our current settings for an additional twelve days.”  Last month, the World Health Organization highlighted New Zealand as an example for having “successfully eliminated community transmission.”  In June, Prime Minister Ardern said the country had “united in unprecedented ways to crush the virus.”   But the new cases are a reminder – even in places where the virus had seemingly vanished – that outbreaks can still happen.New Zealand’s international borders remain closed to foreign nationals.
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Severe floods in North Korea have killed at least 22 people and left four others missing, according to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.In a statement citing figures from North Korean officials, the IFRC said the floods have also caused widespread crop damage, intensifying economic concerns in a country that already suffers chronic food shortages.The state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported Friday that nearly 40,000 hectares of crops have been damaged and 17,000 houses destroyed or inundated.“Lots of roads, bridges and railway sections (were) broken, a dam of a power station gave way and there was other severe damage in various sectors of the national economy,” the KCNA report said.The Korean peninsula has seen a much longer than usual monsoon season. Parts of South Korea recently saw 49 consecutive days of rain, causing floods and landslides that killed dozens of people.North Korea is particularly vulnerable to flooding. It lacks adequate infrastructure and suffers from widespread deforestation, which resulted in part from people cutting down trees for fuel or firewood or to clear land for farming.The floods come as North Korea tries to prevent the spread of coronavirus. Last month, North Korea locked down an area around the southwestern city of Kaesong after warning that a defector from South Korea might have brought the virus across the border.On Friday, KCNA reported that the Kaesong lockdown was lifted “based on the scientific verification and guarantee by a professional anti-epidemic organization.”North Korea has reported no confirmed coronavirus cases, even as it carries out strict measures to keep the disease from spreading.At a politburo meeting Thursday, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un indicated his country would not accept international aid for flood damage, due to coronavirus concerns.“The situation, in which the spread of the worldwide malignant virus has become worse, requires us not to allow any outside aid for the flood damage but shut the border tighter and carry out strict anti-epidemic work,” Kim was quoted as saying.According to the IFRC, North Korea’s Red Cross is providing relief to support 2,800 families, including family tents for people most at risk, tarpaulins, shelter tool kits, kitchen sets and quilts to help people with their urgent needs.“DPRK Red Cross volunteers are also providing hygiene kits, water containers and water purification tablets, all while engaging in COVID-19 prevention activities,” the IFRC said.South Korea has also offered help, partly in the hopes that such humanitarian assistance would help lead to renewed diplomatic engagement with North Korea. But Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul, said that now appears unlikely.“Kim Jong Un’s public rejection of international aid for flood recovery, and his lifting a COVID-19 quarantine on the border city of Kaesong, are negative indicators for inter-Korean cooperation,” Easley said.North Korea walked away from nuclear talks with the United States late last year. It has also ended almost every form of engagement with South Korea.Despite its claim of being coronavirus-free, experts say the disease has likely reached North Korea’s borders. A major outbreak could be disastrous, since many areas of North Korea are impoverished and the country lacks adequate medical supplies and facilities.North Korea formally closed its borders due to coronavirus concerns in late January, shortly after the outbreak was first reported in neighboring China. The lockdown has resulted in plummeting economic activity with China, North Korea’s biggest trading partner. That has put even more strain on an economy already held back by international sanctions.
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The United States announced Thursday that it would require the center that runs the Confucius Institute to register as a foreign mission of the ruling Chinese Communist Party, alleging the group’s Chinese language courses are part of a widespread campaign of influence and propaganda in the U.S.In a statement, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo presented the Confucius Institute U.S. Center in Washington as “an entity advancing Beijing’s global propaganda and malign influence campaign on U.S. campuses and K-12 classrooms” and said that the center “has taken advantage of America’s openness.”The announcement comes of the heels of another spat over the fate of popular video app TikTok. Over the past several months, the U.S. and China have exchanged blows over the coronavirus pandemic, civil liberties in Hong Kong, sovereignty infringement in the South China Sea and trade.U.S. officials have also warned of increasing attempts by Chinese agents to steal trade and military secrets, especially at universities.David Stilwell, the top U.S. diplomat for East Asia, emphasized that the Institute would not be banned.“We’re not kicking them out,” he said in a briefing. “We’re just highlighting the fact that these folks do work for the Ministry of Education of the [Chinese] Communist Party.”In May, a bipartisan group of U.S. college campus political organizations — the College Republican National Committee and the College Democrats of America — issued an open letter calling to close all Confucius Institutes in the United States, citing China’s human rights record with particular emphasis on the government crackdown in Hong Kong.In January, however, the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) expressed a different view.”We do support the type of work done by Confucius Institutes in terms of building libraries, funding Chinese language classes and promoting cultural exchanges,” AAC&U President Lynn Pasquerella told VOA. “Our experience has not uncovered any evidence of interference by the Chinese government or infringements on academic freedom.”China is our greatest collaborator for scientific research, and over-surveillance will have a negative impact on knowledge generation,” she said.Organizations designated as foreign missions must submit reports to the U.S. government about its funding, personnel, curriculum and activities that occur in the U.S.About 500 K-12 classrooms and 65 campus chapters run by the institute may be affected if the new designation requires shifts in organizational procedure or programming.Academic exchanges would still occur as usual, Stilwell said, but urged campuses to take a “hard look” at their ties to Chinese-based programs.Pompeo said he wanted to ensure that American schools “can make informed choices about whether these CCP (Chinese Communist Party)-backed programs should be allowed to continue, and if so, in what fashion.”Earlier this year, the U.S. government declared that four Chinese media outlets would be added to the “foreign missions” list because of their relationship to the Chinese government.According to Stilwell, the U.S. government is open to restoring good relations with Asian economic giant but expressed frustration that their concerns appear to go unheeded.“We are having discussions and we’re emphasizing to them that they need to address our fundamental concerns, and we will take steps if they do not,” Stilwell said. 
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Officials in New Zealand say they have now identified 13 new cases of COVID-19 in Auckland, the nation’s largest city, all directly related to the four cases from the same household reported Tuesday. New Zealand Ministry of Health Director-General Ashley Bloomfield told reporters in Wellington Thursday that authorities are treating the 13 cases as a cluster. He said they have learned clusters continue to grow, and he fully expects there will be additional cases. He said all those in the cluster are in isolation and they, along will all other all confirmed cases, will be managed in a quarantine facility. Until those new cases, the country had gone 102 days without a locally transmitted COVID-19 case. An additional case is a returned international traveler who is in a quarantine facility. A news alert is displayed on a mobile phone in Christchurch, New Zealand, Aug. 11, 2020.Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said she is expecting the situation to worsen before it improves, though she said it was “heartening” to see these new cases all in one cluster, which usually means it can be isolated and contained. But Ardern noted the virus is “tricky” and can spread easily, which is why she is moving forward with her plan to limit people-to-people contact in Auckland.  “We have a plan, we have acted quickly, and now we’ll continue to roll out that plan,” Ardern said. Auckland has been shut down through midnight Friday, with businesses closed and mandatory mask requirements. Ardern Wednesday urged residents elsewhere in the country to wear masks to show their support. Meanwhile, cars began lining up outside testing centers around Auckland as officials attempt to track and trace these new cases.  Before this week’s outbreak, New Zealand had been held up by world health authorities as one of the best examples for managing the pandemic. 
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A new coronavirus outbreak that prompted New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern to put the city of Auckland under a new lockdown is growing.Authorities in the northern city Thursday reported 13 new community infections, all of them connected to a family of four who tested positive for the virus, becoming the country’s new locally transmitted cases of COVID-19 in 102 days. The new confirmed cases bring the total number of active new cases to 36, including one person who entered New Zealand from overseas.Prime Minister Ardern placed Auckland’s 1.6 million people under a three-day lockdown Tuesday, mandating that its 1.6 million citizens stay indoors except for essential trips.  Police checkpoints were established at the city’s borders to turn away anyone attempting to leave. Ardern has also ordered strict social distancing measures for the rest of the country.Dr. Ashley Bloomfield, New Zealand’s health minister, said Wednesday that investigators are searching a cold storage facility where one of the infected people worked, on the chance the virus was imported, but other experts believe it was more likely it had been spreading in Auckland for weeks.The new outbreak has also prompted Ardern to delay the dissolution of parliament, a decision that could lead to the postponement of parliamentary elections scheduled for September 19.Medical workers dispose of trash bags containing hazardous biological waste into a pile outside the Hospital del Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social, which treats patients with COVID-19, in Veracruz, Mexico, Aug. 12, 2020.Among the world’s 20.6 million total confirmed infections, including nearly 750,000 deaths, New Zealand has one of the lowest numbers in either category, with just 1,589 cases and 22 deaths. Ardern imposed a strict nationwide lockdown in March in the outbreak’s earliest days and closed New Zealand’s borders to international travel, while introducing a widespread testing and tracing regime.In the United States, another collegiate athletic conference is postponing its fall sports schedule due to the pandemic. The Big East Conference announced Wednesday none of its 11 member schools will hold contests in men’s and women’s cross country track and soccer (football), and women’s volleyball and field hockey, after consulting with its internal COVID-19 task force.The decision by the Big East comes a day after the Big Ten and the Pac-12 announced they were calling off all of their fall sports competitions, including their lucrative schedule of American-style football games. The Big East does not participate in football.The Big Ten and Pac-12, along with the Atlantic Coast, Southeastern and Big 12, make up the so-called “Power Five” major college athletic conferences, whose gridiron football programs are not only among the best in the nation, but also bring in billions of dollars in revenue from ticket sales and national television contracts.The prospect of any U.S. college football being played during the traditional fall season amid the pandemic was thrown into doubt well before the Big Ten and Pac-12 postponed their seasons. Three other conferences, along with a handful of independent college programs, have either postponed or canceled their football seasons. But the ACC, SEC and Big 12 said Wednesday they plan to carry on with their football seasons, although with a limited number of games.Meanwhile, one of the world’s top golf tournaments – The Masters – will be played this year with no spectators.It’s the third major U.S. golf match to be fan-free this year. The PGA Championship was played last week with no one watching from the sidelines. The U.S. Open, which was moved from June to September, will also have no spectators.The Masters is usually held every April at Augusta National Golf Club in Georgia. The club has been closed because of the coronavirus, and this year’s tournament has been postponed until November.
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At first glance, the videos conjure up visions of a secluded utopian paradise.In one, a young woman rides on horseback in the dewy landscape of China’s southwestern Sichuan province, picks lily magnolias while wearing in a red cape and then cooks a large spread of dishes with the blossoms.In another, she uses grape skins to dye white cloth, sews a flowing purple maxi-dress, and dances in her beautiful, spacious country house.Meet one of China’s most popular vloggers, Li Ziqi. Picking ingredients from her farm, constructing furniture by hand, and tending her adorable sheep and dogs, she performs the work of a farmer with the grace of a fairy and offers a romantic depiction of China’s country life.This rural dreamscape comes with some hardheaded analytics: She has over 26.3 million followers on China’s Sina Weibo, more than over 3.5 million followers on Facebook and She has 11.8 million subscribers on YouTube, where her last post, “The Life of Cucumbers” generated more than 10 million views in three weeks. Facebook and YouTube are blocked by China’s Great Firewall.Li is one of the few Chinese Internet celebrities whose popularity transcends borders. She has received high praise from China’s state media outlets for “showing the wonderful lives of Chinese people in the countryside,” who account for about 40 percent of its people.Experts who spoke to VOA say that China is trying to tap into its vast pool of talented cybercelebrities to generate soft power for the country. Yet they suggest the strategy is unlikely to be very successful because the actions of the Chinese Communist Party have generated mostly negative publicity outside of China. Soft power, a concept first introduced by Harvard University professor Joseph Nye, refers to a country’s appeal and attraction originated from its culture, political values, foreign policies and ways of life.Party approvalIn an interview with Goldthread, which explores trends and presents human interest stories from China, the 30-year-old said she started as a one-woman operation in 2015. Li said now she has a videographer and an assistant, but she “has full control of the content she wants to film.” The news outlet noted that they were not allowed to observe Li’s filming.Li’s main audience includes urban millennials, as her videos portray an appealing rural life for urban fantasies. Michel Hockx, a professor of Chinese literature at the University of Notre Dame, told VOA Mandarin that these videos would undoubtedly appeal Western audiences and Chinese-speaking communities worldwide.“For non-Chinese audiences, they might strengthen certain views of Chinese culture and Chinese tradition as “exotic and different,” he said.Along with praise from her fans in China and elsewhere, China’s official CCTV applauded Li for introducing Chinese culture to the world, telling China’s stories and showing “the confidence and wonderful lives of China’s youth.” All this falls in line with President Xi Jinping’s call issued two years ago to “to tell China’s stories well, present a true, multidimensional, and panoramic view of China, and enhance our country’s cultural soft power.”Global Times, an English-language Chinese newspaper published under the auspices of the official People’s Daily, reported Li lives a reclusive yet ideal Chinese pastoral life, adding which foreigners may liken to “a fairy tale.” The China Association of Young Rural Entrepreneurial Leaders, an organization with deep ties to the Communist Youth League, has invited Li to be their ambassador.Kingsley Edney, the author of Soft Power With Chinese Characteristics: China’s Campaign for Hearts and Minds, said the fact that the state media are praising vloggers like Li sends a political signal.“The Chinese government would certainly see these celebrities as a potential resource, but one that needs to be harnessed and controlled,” he told VOA Mandarin.Stanley Rosen, a professor of Chinese politics at the University of Southern California, echoed Edney.“I think there is no question that the Party/government wants to co-opt these individuals for domestic and international purposes,” he told VOA Mandarin. “The latter is clear from the YouTube channel since YouTube is banned in China.”Han Li, an associate professor of literature at Rhodes College, pointed out that Li has a support team for her presence on the banned platforms, Facebook and YouTube. “That tells you she has government support,” she told VOA.Soft powerIn June, an article in The Diplomat magazine said suggested that individual content creators like Li are sensitive to viewer perceptions and present a softer, diversified, and apolitical side of Chinese society that better connects with international audiences.“Their success implies that China could tap into this vast pool of talented cyber celebrities to generate soft power for the country – in fact, this may have already started,” wrote author Jo Kim.Rosen said the Chinese Communist Party has tried to generate soft power through its culture in numerous ways, including films and Confucius Institutes, but has not been notably successful, particularly in the West.“Given all the negatives that stem from China’s actions in Xinjiang, Hong Kong, the South China Sea and elsewhere, the Party-state is looking for something to show the ‘soft side’ of China, through ordinary people, to show that Chinese people are just like people everywhere,” he said.Yet Rosen argued this strategy would be hard to be overly successful because the recent aggressive actions of CCP have generated negative publicity outside China.Since Xi came to power, the Chinese leader has stressed the importance of building a network to reach out to the international audience, and do a better job “telling China’s stories, conveying China’s voice and building cultural self-confidence.”Jonathan McClory, a globally recognized expert on soft power and government communications, said it’s hard for China to win the hearts of citizens from other countries in light of its authoritarian rule at home and aggressive foreign policies abroad.“While cultural soft power is best placed to draw people in for an initial ‘conversation’, (China’s) behavior in terms of domestic and foreign policy will carry the day in shaping global opinion of a country,” he told VOA.Edney said the biggest problem with China’s image is its political system. Meanwhile, almost all of the culture it promotes is traditional Chinese culture which is largely non-existent in today’s China.He recommended the Chinese authorities give these Internet celebrities a little space to promote their quirky interests or personalities, so it can help showcase the vibrancy of contemporary Chinese society to international audiences and give people a fresh view of the country.Edney continued, saying “Internet celebrities are not going to be able to make people ignore human rights abuses in China.” 
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China is pushing for the adoption of a new worldwide Internet Protocol that could make the internet bigger and faster, but also potentially less anonymous. The technology, called IPv6, is an upgrade of the internet’s architecture that would allow trillions more electronic devices to have unique addresses online.At a global summit held in Guangdong, China, July 30-31, the country’s top internet agencies called for a new IP-only Internet. “The initiative proposed that 2020 be the first year for the global large-scale acceleration of the deployment of pure IPv6,” the state-run Xinhua news agency reported last Friday.Designed to replace the version 4 protocol that the current internet mostly depends on, IPv6 is an upgraded version of the architecture that creates the unique “addresses” that allow computer networks around the world to communicate with one another.A larger and faster internet, but at what cost?  As the first widely deployed Internet Protocol, IPv4 has been in use for decades. It also has been running out of space. In the 1990s as the Web rapidly grew, technologists warned that there were only about 4.3 billion addresses available, and eventually the number of online devices like PCs, smartphones, tablets, gaming systems and “smart” appliances would exceed that, preventing new devices from going online.  By 1998, engineers came up with a proposal to rebuild the system under a new protocol. The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), an organization responsible for establishing internet standards, developed the new IPv6 communications protocol, which uses a 128-bit address versus IPv4’s 32-bit address, dramatically expanding the number of devices that can go online.   “There are more than enough IPv6 addresses for every piece of dust on the face of the Earth,” Wu Hequan, chairman of the Internet Society of China, told Xinhua in 2017 when the general offices of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and the State Council first unveiled the country’s action plan on the deployment of IPv6.  The system also promises that by using improved routing techniques, the new internet will not only be larger, but faster. In a technical presentation at a technology conference last month, Apple shared some internal statistics in the hope of convincing app developers to adopt IPv6. “And when IPv6 is in use, the median connection setup is 1.4 times faster than IPv4,” said Jiten Mehta, internet technologies engineer at Apple.  More unique IDs may mean “real-name” IP system  Because IPv6 can provide a virtually unlimited number of unique addresses, the Chinese government is considering creating globally unique IP addresses that would be assigned to each citizen as a sort of online identification. Proponents say a previously unattainable goal under IPv4 is now within the reach: a true internet real name system.  China already requires that people prove their identity with government documentation when opening a phone account or registering for home internet service. Once they go online, using different devices, however, the current IP system makes it difficult or impossible to tie people’s real identities to the online devices. IPv6 would change that.   “With IPv6, we would know where every piece of data is from, which machine it was sent from, and who received it,” said Wu Jianmin, chair of computer science and technology at Tsinghua University, according to Xinhua.   Wu Hequan, who also served as director of China Next Generation Internet, said in the same report that would mean China would succeed in pinning online users to real-world identities. “The traceability of IPv6 can also support online applications to established real name authentication systems.”   Outside analysts say this elimination of anonymity online is one of the main reasons China’s leaders are attracted to the system. “The communist party has been sold on the idea that because of the transparency of the network’s addresses under IPv6, they think it would make it easier to identify people,” said Milton Mueller, a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology School of Public Policy.  But that is true everywhere, not just China, emphasized Mueller, who is the co-founder and director of the Internet Governance Project (IGP), a policy analysis center for global internet governance. “It is supported by law enforcement authorities in Europe and in the U.S. as well because it is easier to track people down.”  Efforts to improve privacy in IPv6 In 2007, a group called the Internet Engineering Task Force, or IETF, created a feature called “Privacy Extensions” that is designed to prevent the kind of surveillance to which IPv6 would be susceptible. Dan York, project leader for Open Standards Everywhere at the Internet Society, told VOA that critics of the new system seem to miss that when IPv6 is implemented, the privacy extensions are also implemented to prevent this kind of surveillance.  “For a good number of years now all major operating systems (Windows, Mac OS, IOS, Android, Linux) provide new, randomized IPv6 addresses on a regular basis,” said York, whose organization is a strong proponent for IPv6. “So, on an iPhone, you are repeatedly getting a new IPv6 address throughout any given day.”  The problem is that while those extensions are installed and enabled by default, they may make the system slower and could be turned off entirely. A 2007 IETF document suggests that such a feature could be disabled. The U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology released guidelines for IPv6 deployment that say organizations only “generally” should use privacy extensions for external communications but not for internal communications.  “With internal IT systems, privacy extensions affect logging and prevent administrators from properly tracking which systems are accessing which services. Many internal resources require the ability to track the end user’s use of services for correct operations,” the guidelines said.  A study by Helsinki University of Technology, titled “IPv6 is Bad for Your Privacy,” also found that the privacy extensions themselves could pose security vulnerabilities if they are used to create a “covert channel” that could violate a user’s privacy.  Impact on VPNs   Many internet users now go online with the help of a virtual private network (VPN), which allows them to circumvent censorship and internet controls. For a variety of technical reasons, the majority of VPNs do not support the IPv6, possibly exposing an internet user’s web activity to their internet service provider.   That is one of the reasons the Chinese government has made migrating to IPv6 a national priority, said Ross Darrell Feingold, a lawyer and political risk analyst who advises clients on doing business in China. “With the use of VPNs common in China, despite being illegal, it is no surprise that the Chinese government and companies have put significant resources into arming themselves with as much knowledge as possible about IPv6,” Feingold said in an email to VOA.  An organization that tracks Chinese censorship, iyouport.org, recommends users not use IPv6 in the VPN application settings to prevent these leaks. “The vast majority of the internet still uses IPv4, but sometimes IPv6 address is used. When it does, your VPN may not be able to protect this address.”  The use of VPNs has become more popular in the United States in recent years as well. A study released in June by Security.org, a security company, reported that 68% of American internet users (142 million) claim to use some type of free or paid VPN.  With IPv6, however, the internet is evolving quickly, and so is online privacy. In 2008, just 0.14% of internet users accessed Google over IPv6. Today, more than 30% do. One of the top U.S. authorities on the issue, the federal chief information officer, has advised federal agencies to anticipate as much as 80% of their traffic could be on IPv6 systems by 2025.   
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Australia is reporting a new single-day record 21 COVID-19 deaths Wednesday, along with 428 new infections.   The fatalities occurred in the southern state of Victoria, which has been battling a dramatic surge of new infections since late June that prompted authorities to impose strict lockdowns to control the spread of the virus.   A pedestrian wears a face mask as the city operates under lockdown in response to an outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Melbourne, Australia, Aug. 12, 2020. (AAP Image/James Ross via Reuters)Premier David Andrews says all the fatalities were mainly those between their 70s and 90s, with one woman over 100, and that 16 of them were linked to elder care facilities. Victoria state also posted 410 new infections Wednesday, breaking a run of three consecutive days of new infections below 400.   The remaining 18 infections reported Wednesday were in neighboring New South Wales, where authorities have reported a new cluster of infections at a private school in Sydney.   In New Zealand, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said Wednesday she is delaying the dissolution of parliament, a decision that could lead to the postponement of parliamentary elections scheduled for September 19.  Ardern issued a lockdown Tuesday on the city of Auckland after a family of four tested positive for COVID-19.The family is the first new locally transmitted cases of coronavirus in 102 days. Health  authorities are working to trace the source of the new infections.  Dr. Ashley Bloomfield, New Zealand’s health minister, says investigators are looking into the possibility the virus was imported by freight.   Sporting world impactedThe pandemic continues to have an effect on the sporting world, as two major U.S. college athletic conferences announced Tuesday they are postponing their upcoming fall (gridiron) football seasons.    Big Ten Commissioner Kevin Warren said after consulting with the conference’s medical advisory board “it became abundantly clear that there was too much uncertainty regarding potential medical risks to allow our student-athletes to compete this fall.”   
 FILE – An empty Michigan Stadium is seen on the University of Michigan campus amid reports of college football cancellation, during the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in Ann Arbor, Michigan, August 10, 2020.Pac-12 Commissioner Larry Scott said the presidents and chancellors of all of the member schools agreed their individual programs “are a part of broader campuses in communities where in many cases the prevalence of COVID-19 is significant.”      The Big Ten includes such legendary collegiate football programs as Ohio State, Michigan and Penn State, while the Pac-12 conference, based primarily in the western United States, includes such traditional powerhouses as Stanford, the University of Southern California (USC) and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).     In addition to football, the Big Ten says it is postponing all of its fall sports activities, including men’s and women’s track and field and American-style soccer. The Pac-12 said it will not hold any sports competitions for the remainder of 2020.   The two conferences, along with the Atlantic Coast, Southeastern and Big 12, make up the so-called “Power Five” major college athletic conferences, whose football programs are not only among the best in the nation, but also bring in billions of dollars in revenue from ticket sales and national television contracts.     The prospect of any U.S. college football being played during the traditional fall season amid the COVID-19 pandemic was thrown into doubt well before the Big Ten and Pac-12 postponed their seasons.  Three other conferences, including the Ivy League, which represents such prestigious schools as Harvard, Yale and Princeton, have either postponed or outright canceled their football seasons.  Medical experts have expressed concern that otherwise young and healthy athletes could develop long term health problems if they contract COVID-19, including heart and lung damage.    President Donald Trump speaks at a news conference in the James Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House, Aug. 11, 2020, in Washington.But U.S. President Donald Trump has been one of the leading figures urging college football to begin its season as normal, telling reporters at the White House Tuesday the players are “young, strong people” who will be able to fight off the virus.       The pandemic has forced the National Basketball League and National Hockey League to resume their seasons in centralized locations, dubbed “bubbles,” where players and coaching staffs must remain during competition.  Major League Baseball’s shortened 60-game season has been marred with several players from the Miami Marlins and St. Louis Cardinals testing positive for COVID-19, forcing the league to postpone dozens of games and putting the truncated season at risk of being canceled.      
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Hundreds of millions of U.S. dollars and hundreds of hours spent working with and training Philippine government forces appear to be doing little to dislodge Islamic State fighters entrenched in the country’s south.The assessment, part of a just-released Pentagon report, warns that at best, U.S.-supported efforts in the Philippines have fought IS and other terror groups to a stalemate, with Philippine forces unable to gain the upper hand.“In general, efforts to reduce extremism in the Philippines do not appear to have made a substantial difference,” U.S. Defense Department Acting Inspector General Sean O’Donnell wrote in the In this photo taken on March 28, 2018 shows an aerial shot of bombed-out houses in Marawi City, after five months of house-to-house fighting between troops and jihadists loyal to the Islamic State.But aside from some initial progress, when U.S. special forces aided Philippine efforts to recapture the city of Marawi, on the southern Philippine island of Mindanao, in 2017, efforts to eradicate IS have not met with sustained success.Despite seeing 1,000 of its fighters killed or captured in the five-month-long battle for Marawi, and the death of its leader, Isnilon Hapilon, a month later, IS has persisted.  U.S. counterterrorism and military officials say IS has managed to keep its numbers in the low to mid hundreds.The latest estimates, from the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency indicate IS has anywhere from 300 to 500 fighters, divided into numerous factions, including the Abu Sayyaf Group, the Maute Group, Ansar Khalifa and others.There are also indications that the terror group is spreading beyond its historical strongholds in the southern Philippines.This past June, Philippine security forces said four IS fighters, part of a sleeper cell, were killed in a raid in the capital of Manila. And U.S. officials caution that IS continues to gain supporters across the country, even in areas where it is not currently fighting.IS and COVID-19There are also concerns that IS fighters are taking advantage of the coronavirus pandemic.  ”COVID-19 restrictions, coupled with force rotations, negatively impacted the amount of U.S. intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) support,” the Pentagon inspector general report said.And there are concerns IS groups could also get a boost from former members or sympathizers who may have been among the 10,000 prisoners released by the government in response to the spread of the coronavirus through the country’s prison system.  Officials also worry about the failure of U.S. efforts to help change “the economic, social, and political conditions” which may be fueling the popularity of groups like Islamic State.”We have seen little progress in improving the economic, social, & political conditions” in southern #Philippines “where separatist groups and extremist groups have existed for decades” per new @DoD_IG report
— Jeff Seldin (@jseldin) August 11, 2020“We pay lip service to this idea of countering the narrative, but we don’t really have a great sense of what that entails,” said Colin Clarke, a senior fellow at the Soufan Center, a global security research group.“We’ve pretty much kind of rolled out the whole kitchen sink in an attempt to make progress,” he said. “Through every step forward, there’s been two steps back because we haven’t had the ability to conduct the kind of sustained nationwide CVE [countering violent extremism] program. It’s been more kind of, you know, drips and drab.” 
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The United States and Taiwan are making a public show of strengthening ties this week, signing a memorandum of understanding to improve cooperation in public health as part of a high-level U.S. visit to the island.In the absence of formal diplomatic ties, the MOU was signed on Monday by W. Brent Christensen, director the American Institute in Taiwan, and Yang Jen-ni, chairwoman of the Taiwan Council for U.S. Affairs on behalf of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in the United States.Visiting U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar and Taiwanese Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung witnessed the signing ceremony at the Central Epidemic Command Center in Taipei.Three Taiwanese industry experts who spoke to VOA say the memorandum will bring business opportunities to Taiwan, especially if the U.S. provides technology transfers in advanced medical material to support Taiwan’s public health industry. That will enable Taiwan to begin shifting its medical supply lines away from China and towards the United States.U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, left, and Taiwanese Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung pose during a signing of a memorandum of understanding at the Central Epidemic Command Center in Taipei, Aug. 10, 2020.Shifting away from ChinaDarson Chiu, a research fellow at the Taiwan Institute of Economic Research, told VOA that the coronavirus pandemic has prompted Taiwan’s policy makers to reassess Taiwan’s reliance on raw materials from China.“The Trump administration wants to reduce its reliance on China from its medical supply chain, and the trend is the same in Taiwan,” he said. “The past model is Taiwan will use China as a supplier for materials before sending goods to the U.S. In the future, we are moving to get rid of this ‘middleman’.”He said, as an example, that China has used masks made in Taiwan since the COVID-19 pandemic that were produced without elements produced in China. Previously, Taiwanese companies either imported raw materials from China for low-cost products, or sent high value semi-finished medical equipment or other public health products to China for assembly, before exporting these goods to other markets.He added that if there’s strong demand from the U.S. for these public health products, some Taiwanese companies might consider shifting part of their supply chains to Mexico, “where they can enjoy low labor costs, zero tariff from USMCA [the United States, Mexico and Canada trade agreement], and lower transportation costs.”Aaron Chen, the chief operating officer of TCI, said collaboration with Taiwan is consistent with America’s public health policy needs. TCI is a leading contract research manufacturing organization based in Taiwan.“President (Donald) Trump wants to move the medical supply chain back to the U.S., but he has to consider costs,” said Chen. “For things like masks, which have low profit margins, it’s hard to shift the supply chain back to the U.S. For high value-added products, it also depends on if the U.S. government can roll out supporting policies for companies to shift their supply chain across the Pacific.”He said an option is for the U.S. to shift part of this supply chain to Taiwan.“Let’s do a simple comparison of production costs. Generally speaking, if the manufacturing cost to produce in China is 1, then in Taiwan it’s around 1.25. If made in Japan, it will be 1.75; and in the U.S., the cost will double,” Chen said. “So made in Taiwan products have cost advantage, they can also enjoy tariff preference.”A pool of talentsChan Chang-chuan, former dean of National Taiwan University College of Public Health, told VOA that there’s another important playing card in Taiwan’s public health industry.“Taiwan has great biotech R&D talents, and more than 70% of them are trained in the United States.,” said Chan.He hopes the new memorandum of understanding will facilitate collaboration and investment in biotech firms between the U.S. and the island.Taiwan Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung called this week’s signing of the MOU a “historic moment,” adding that it marked a breakthrough in health and medical cooperation between Taiwan and the U.S.Azar, the U.S. health chief, described the MOU as a “landmark achievement,” as it formalized more than 20 years of collaboration between his department and Taiwan’s Ministry of Health and Welfare on a wide range of issues.Azar also praised Taiwan for its response to COVID-19, saying it has been “among the most successful in the world.” 
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U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday said his relationship with Chinese President Xi Jinping has frayed in the wake of the novel coronavirus pandemic and that he has not spoken to his Chinese counterpart in a long time.
“I used to have a very good relationship with him,” Trump told Fox Sports Radio in an interview, citing their Phase One trade deal hammered out last year and signed in early 2020. “I had a great relationship with President Xi. I like him, but I don’t feel the same way now.”
Trump said his feelings changed amid COVID-19.
“I certainly feel differently. I had a very, very good relationship, and I haven’t spoken to him in a long time.”
Trump, who is seeking re-election in the Nov. 3 U.S. election, made challenging China a key part of his 2016 presidential campaign and touted his friendly ties with Xi during much of his first term in office as he sought to make good on his trade deal promises.
But he said on Tuesday that the fallout from the outbreak was worse than the conflict over trade. “This is a thousand times the trade deal what happened with all of the death and … the world had to shutdown. It’s a disgrace,” he told Fox.
First reports of the virus emerged from China in late 2019 and it has now infected more than 20 million people and killed at least 735,369 worldwide, including at least 5.1 million cases and at least 163,160 deaths in the United States.
U.S.-China ties have also frayed over Beijing’s crackdown in Hong Kong and the disputed South China Sea, among other issues.
Asked about the arrest of pro-democracy advocates in Hong Kong under China’s new security law, as well as issues over Taiwan, Trump pointed to his administration’s steps to end Hong Kong’s special trading status. He did not address the arrest of Hong Kong’s Apple Daily owner Jimmy Lai, one of the city’s most prominent activists.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and White House national security adviser Robert O’Brien on Monday said the United States was troubled by Lai’s arrest.
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