Maria Ressa, a journalist who runs a Philippine news website known for its tough scrutiny of President Rodrigo Duterte, pleaded not guilty on Wednesday to tax evasion charges, saying the case was politically motivated to harass and intimidate.
 
Ressa, a Time Magazine Person of the Year in 2018 for fighting media intimidation, is facing several government lawsuits that have caused international concern about harassment of journalists in the Philippines, a country long seen as a standard bearer for press freedom in Asia.
 
Ressa, 56, who is chief executive of the news site Rappler, was convicted of libel last month and sentenced to up to six year in prison, a ruling widely seen as a blow to democratic freedoms under Duterte’s increasingly popular authoritarianism. She was freed on bail.
 
Ressa’s latest court appearance is over accusations Rappler falsified tax returns by omitting the proceeds of a sale of depositary receipts to foreign investors, which later became the securities regulator’s basis to revoke its license.
 
“These charges are politically motivated, it is meant to harass and intimidate, it is meant to be a war of attrition to try to make us afraid to keep reporting,” Ressa, a dual U.S.-Filipino citizen, told reporters after she pleaded not guilty to the charges. “The best response to it is to keep reporting.”
 
Rappler has repeatedly challenged the accuracy of Duterte’s public statements and his justification for his controversial foreign policy.
 
It has also reported on alleged atrocities in his war on drugs and probed what it says are massive, state-orchestrated social media hate campaigns against Duterte’s critics.
 
Duterte has publicly lashed out at Rappler, calling it a “fake news outlet” sponsored by American spies.
 
In the tax evasion case, the securities regulator alleges that Rappler allowed foreigners to illegally own shares in a domestic media firm.
 
Rappler, a startup, has maintained foreigners never owned shares, but were allowed to invest without voting rights or involvement in operations. Rappler is still operating pending its appeal against its license being revoked.
 
Media watchdogs and human rights activists say the charges against Ressa are part of a broader strategy to silence or humiliate opponents of Duterte.
 
Earlier this month, his allies in Congress voted overwhelmingly in favour of denying top broadcaster ABS-CBN’s bid to renew its 25-year license, an outcome that Duterte had repeatedly promised would happen because of its refusal to air some of his election campaign commercials.
 
“It is shocking where we are right now,” Ressa said.
 
“It is unthinkable that ABS-CBN shut down. This is the perfect storm where the pandemic and lockdown enabled the government to quickly consolidate power.”
 
Presidential spokesman Harry Roque reiterated Duterte supports freedom of speech and any media facing legal cases are for breaking the law, not for their reporting.
 
“The press can keep on reporting as long as there is no violation and has the right to continue its operations,” he said in a statement.
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The U.S. ordered the Chinese consulate in Houston, Texas, shut down because of the persistent problem of Bejing’s theft of American intellectual property, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Wednesday.US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo looks on during a press conference in Eigtved’s Warehouse, in Copenhagen Wednesday July 22, 2020.“We are setting out clear expectations as to how the Chinese Communist Party is going to behave,” the top U.S. diplomat said at a news conference in Denmark. 
 
“And when they don’t, we are going to take actions that protect the American people, protect our security, our national security, and also protect our economy and jobs,” he said. 
 
China was given until Friday afternoon to close the Houston facility, which has about 60 employees. The U.S. order was a sharp escalation of recent fraying relations between the United States, the world’s biggest economy, and No. 2 China. 
 
The directive came a day after U.S. President Donald Trump acknowledged that the coronavirus pandemic that originated in China is likely to get worse in the United States before it gets better.The number of coronavirus cases is surging in the U.S. to an average of 66,000 a day over the last week, and the number of deaths, now topping 142,000, is rising again to more than 900 a day after slowing in recent weeks.  FILE – Emergency Medical Technicians (EMT) arrive with a patient while a funeral car begins to depart at North Shore Medical Center where the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) patients are treated, in Miami, Florida, July 14, 2020.Pompeo said China’s Houston operations had a wide effect. 
 
“It’s not just American intellectual property that is stolen,” he said. “It’s been European intellectual property, too, costing hundreds of thousands of jobs, good jobs for hard-working people all across Europe and America, stolen by the Chinese Communist Party.” 
 
He said that President Trump “has said ‘enough.’ We’re not going to allow this to continue to happen.…” 
 
One key Republican lawmaker, Senator Marco Rubio, said the Chinese consulate in Houston “is not a diplomatic facility. It is the central node of the Communist Party’s vast network of spies & influence operations in the United States. 
 
“This needed to happen” Rubio declared. 
 
There are six other Chinese diplomatic missions in the U.S.: its embassy in Washington, an office at the United Nations and consulates in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Chicago.  FILE – U.S. President Donald Trump meets with China’s President Xi Jinping at the start of their bilateral meeting at the G-20 leaders summit in Osaka, Japan, June 29, 2019.While Trump has often praised Chinese President Xi Jinping, tensions between the two countries have increased in the midst of the pandemic and China’s security crackdown on protests in Hong Kong, which the U.S. and its Western allies have deplored. The U.S. has issued new travel rules for diplomats and also required some Chinese state news organizations to register as diplomatic entities. 
 
Two Chinese nationals were charged Tuesday with hacking hundreds of entities around the world, including U.S. biotech companies developing COVID-19 vaccines and treatments, while working with China’s security services. 
 
China strenuously objected to the U.S. order to close the Houston consulate and threatened retaliation. 
 
Speaking to reporters in Beijing, Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said the U.S. directive “is an unprecedented escalation of its recent actions against China.” He accused the United States of harassing Chinese diplomatic and consular staff, as well as “intimidating and interrogating Chinese students and confiscating their personal electrical devices” and even going so far as to detain them.   
 
Wang warned that if the Trump administration did not have a change of heart, China would retaliate. A firetruck is positioned outside the Chinese Consulate, July 22, 2020, in Houston.Hours after the order was issued, local Houston television station KPRC broadcast footage of smoke billowing from a courtyard inside the consulate, with fire trucks stationed on the street outside. Houston police said consular staffers were burning documents in open containers in preparation of being evicted, but local authorities did not enter the diplomatic facility. 
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The United States has ordered the Chinese consulate in the southwestern U.S. city of Houston, Texas to shut down. A statement issued early Wednesday morning by State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus said the order to close the consulate was issued “in order to protect American intellectual property and American’s private information.” Referencing the abbreviation of China’s official name, the People’s Republic of China, Ortagus said the United States “will not tolerate the PRC’s violations of our sovereignty and intimidation of our people, just as we have not tolerated the PRC’s unfair trade practices, theft of American jobs, and other egregious behavior.” China has until Friday to shut down the consulate. Speaking to reporters in Beijing, Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin told reporters the order to close the Houston consulate “is an unprecedented escalation of its recent actions against China.”  He accused the United States of harassing Chinese diplomatic and consular staff, as well as “intimidating and interrogating Chinese students and confiscating their personal electrical devices” and even going so far as to detain them.  Wang warned that if the Trump administration did not have a change of heart, China would retaliate. Hours after the order was issued, local Houston television station KPRC broadcast footage of smoke billowing from a courtyard inside the consulate, with fire trucks stationed on the street outside.  Houston police said consular staffers were burning documents in open containers in preparation of being evicted.  Relations between the world’s two largest economies have steadily worsened in recent months over a number of issues, including trade, technology and the new national security law imposed on Hong Kong apparently aimed at squelching pro-democracy activists.   Two Chinese nationals were charged Tuesday with hacking hundreds of entities around the world, including U.S. biotech companies developing COVID-19 vaccines and treatments, while working with China’s security services.   
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Two Chinese nationals working with China’s state security ministry have been charged with a decade-long global campaign targeting intellectual property and confidential business information at hundreds of entities, including COVID-19 vaccine and treatment research conducted by U.S. firms.  Li Xiaoyu, 34, and Dong Jiazhi, 33, were charged in an 11-count indictment unsealed on Tuesday, marking the first time alleged Chinese hackers have been indicted for the “blended threat” of working for the Chinese government while also targeting victims for personal gain.“It is the first time we’re announcing charges that present what we call this blended threat of criminal hackers also doing state sponsored activities and being allowed to do their criminal activities and profit off those criminal activities by the state because they can be on call to state to do this work as well,” said Assistant Attorney General John Demers.Li and Dong, who allegedly studied computer applications technologies at the same Chinese university, remain at large. No officials of China’s Ministry of State Security involved in the campaign were charged.   Officials say the hacking campaign began in 2009 and continued through early July when the two men were indicted. Targeted businesses included high-tech companies in the United States, Australia, Belgium, Germany, Japan, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Spain, South Korea, Sweden, and Britain, according to the indictment. In recent months, as U.S. biotech firms began developing COVID-19 vaccines and treatments, the hackers unsuccessfully sought to target their research. COVID-19 is the disease caused by the coronavirus.In addition to attacking businesses, the alleged hackers also infiltrated the online accounts of non-profits as well as dissidents, clergy and rights activists in the United States, China and other countries, underscoring their services to the Chinese government, according to Demers.“These intrusions are yet another example of China’s brazen willingness to engage in theft through computer intrusions contrary to their international commitments,” Demers said.The indictment comes as U.S. officials raise the alarm about Chinese efforts to steal U.S. intellectual property as part of an effort to supplant the United States as the world’s only superpower.FBI Director Christopher Wray, on July 7, called China’s economic espionage the “greatest long-term threat to our nation’s information and intellectual property, and to our economic vitality.”Almost half of the nearly 5,000 active FBI counterintelligence cases are related to China, Wray said, adding that the bureau is adding a new counterintelligence case related to China every 10 hours.Attorney General William Barr said on Thursday that China is engaged in an “economic blitzkrieg” against the United States, accusing U.S. businesses of bowing to Chinese pressure in pursuit of profit. 
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Broken levees left over 10,000 people stranded in eastern China on Tuesday, as flooding across the country becomes more severe.On Sunday, high water overcame flood defenses around Guzhen, a town in Anhui province.Flood water was up to 3 meters deep, according to Guzhen’s Communist Party secretary, Wang Qingjun.Since the flooding began in June, over 141 people have been reported dead or missing, 150,000 homes were damaged, and losses are estimated at $9 million.Many parts of Anhui Province resorted to drastic measures to mitigate the disaster. One dam was blasted open on Sunday to relieve pressure from flood water behind it, and sluice gates were opened on the Xiangjiaba Dam Monday. While crops and forests were flooded, it was hoped the intentional release will save the area from even greater damage later.The Xiangjiaba Dam has only opened its gates 15 times since it was built in 1953.An increase in rainfall along the Yellow River and the Huai River is expected through Friday, according to China’s Meteorological Administration.Despite torrential and devastating rainfall, the official Xinhua news agency reported that the country’s death toll and economic losses for 2020 so far are below the annual average.China’s heaviest recent flooding occurred in 1998, when over 2,000 people died and almost 3 million houses were ruined. The damage then was primarily along the Yangtze River. 
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The controversial national security law imposed by China on Hong Kong has brought deep concern among its robust civil society and non-governmental organizations who use the territory as regional hub, prompting some to relocate their staff while others fear over their fate under the new legislation. After Hong Kong returned to Chinese rule in 1997, the “one country two systems” formula allowed its freewheeling civil society, including many international and domestic NGOs, to continue operating. But the national security law passed on July 1, dubbed the “second handover,” is causing jitters in the non-profit sector.   Many nonprofit groups say they are worried about being implicated by the law, which aims to “prevent, suppress and impose punishment” for secession, subversion, terrorism and “collusion with a foreign country or with external elements to endanger national security.”   The authorities have emphasized the need for a sweeping law to stamp out Hong Kong’s yearlong anti-government protests, which have often turned violent. On Monday, Chinese Ambassador to the U.S. Cui Tiankai insisted that the law will make Hong Kong’s business environment “more stable and secure.” Chinese officials have said the law was intended to act as a “deterrent” and hang over potential troublemakers “like the sword of Damocles.”   The law appears to have achieved its aim to intimidate.     At least one international NGO has moved all its workers out of Hong Kong while others are planning to shift some of their operations abroad. Some NGO workers have resigned while others have moved abroad or sought to relocate.  Those who have decided to stay in Hong Kong, for now, say they must tread a fine line when doing their work to avoid falling afoul of the law, which has broad and vague definitions of security crimes. All of those who spoke to the VOA declined to be identified for fears of retribution from the authorities.  “It’s a really difficult time for many NGOs,” a veteran human rights worker said. “We don’t know how this law will be implemented and to what extent they will use it.  Everyone is really nervous.”   NGO workers say clauses in the law, particularly those that criminalize “conspiring” with or receiving instructions, funding or support from foreign countries or organizations, make them particularly vulnerable. Groups that have advocated democratization or have criticized the dictatorial nature of the Chinese Communist Party also run the risk of being found guilty of “altering by unlawful means the legal status” of the regime, or “inciting hatred” towards the Chinese or Hong Kong governments, as stated in the law.Pro-democracy lawmakers raise white papers to protest during a meeting to discuss the new national security law at the Legislative Council in Hong Kong, July 7, 2020.An international NGO worker said Hong Kong used to be a place that was convenient to work on projects in China while keeping in touch with the international community, but these advantages are no longer viable under the new law.   “There are no such freedoms anymore. The authorities’ hostility is very apparent, and they could arrest people any time under this broad and vague law,” she said. “When we’re under these threats and limitations, it is very difficult to work.”  She added that the fate of the two Canadians, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, detained in China in December 2018 and now charged for espionage, could easily befall on foreign nationals or people working for international NGOs in Hong Kong. A board member of a small human rights group said most of its staff have resigned and the group must completely restructure its work and move some projects outside Hong Kong.   
 
“Our staff are worried, we really understand,” he said, adding that his group will need to give up some of its overseas funding due to the law’s restrictions on foreign “collusion.” 
 
“There’s so much about this sweeping law which is in the unknown and we can easily be accused of collusion with foreign powers (for our international advocacy),” he said. 
 
Groups that have projects in mainland China have already experienced severe restrictions under its national security law to the extent they can no longer operate there.    
 
The head of a small Hong Kong organization said her group has ceased operation in China for a few years, after the implementation of the national security law in 2015 and the overseas NGO law in 2017.  Now she feels the draconian measures and comprehensive government control over society have been extended to Hong Kong.  
 
“The National Security Law is only the first step,” she said, stressing that China’s all-round suppression of civil society will eventually end many NGOs operating in Hong Kong.   
 
She said her group will try to continue working in Hong Kong for as long as possible, but they will have to work under extremely tight limitations to avoid falling afoul of the law. 
 
“They’re implementing this law to intimidate organizations and hope they’d all close down without the authorities having to take actions,” she said.  “When civil society has shrunken sufficiently, it would be less costly for them to deal with them.” 
 
“Their aim is to bring them under control,” she said. 
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Global wealth managers are examining whether their clients in Hong Kong have ties to the city’s pro-democracy movement, in an attempt to avoid getting caught in the crosshairs of China’s new national security law, according to six people with knowledge of the matter. Bankers at Credit Suisse Group AG, HSBC Holdings Plc, Julius Baer Gruppe AG and UBS Group AG, among others, are broadening scrutiny under their programs that screen clients for political and government ties and subjecting them to additional diligence requirements, these people said. The designation, called politically exposed persons, can make it more difficult or altogether prevent people from accessing banking services, depending on what the bank finds about the person’s source of wealth or financial transactions. The checks at some wealth managers have involved combing through comments made by clients and their associates in public and in media, and social media posts in the recent past, these people said. The new law prohibits what Beijing describes broadly as secession, subversion, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces, with up to life in prison for offenders. The sources, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation, said the broadened scrutiny of clients also applied to Hong Kong and Chinese officials who had implemented the law in anticipation of any U.S. sanctions against them. One banker at a global wealth manager that holds more than $200 billion in assets said the audit of its clients could go back as far as 2014 in some cases to gauge a client’s political stance since Hong Kong’s 2014 pro-democracy “umbrella” movement. Protesters at the time used umbrellas to shield themselves from tear gas and pepper spray deployed by police. Reuters could not learn the identities of any people who had faced enhanced scrutiny or whether the banks had decided to take any action against people identified as politically exposed. Albert Ho, a veteran Hong Kong democrat who runs a law firm and helps organize an annual candlelight vigil to commemorate victims of the June 4, 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown, said he feared that people like him may face “difficulties in the times to come.” “There’s not much you can do, actually, unless you cease all our financial and banking activities in Hong Kong,” Ho said, adding he had not faced additional scrutiny from his bank as of last week. He declined to disclose the name of his bank. HSBC declined to comment specifically on the security law or any U.S. move to sanction local officials. In an emailed statement, it said, “We already have a stringent set of policies and rigorous processes in place which we apply globally.” Credit Suisse, Julius Baer and UBS declined to comment. In an emailed statement, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority said the financial hub implements anti-money laundering requirements “based on international standards including with regard to politically exposed persons.” “The relevant international standards and our guidance to the banking industry have not changed,” the city’s de facto central bank said. China’s Foreign Ministry, the Liaison Office in Hong Kong and the State Council’s Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office did not respond to requests for comment. Banks in focus 
Global banks have long examined the backgrounds of their clients, including screening them for political ties, to satisfy regulatory requirements. Politicians, government officials and senior executives at state-owned enterprises, as well as their family members, are typically considered politically exposed persons. The rules are meant to enforce laws such as international sanctions and to prevent people from using the banking system to launder ill-gotten wealth. The banks’ move to subject supporters of Hong Kong’s democracy movement to a similar review comes at a time when the stance of some firms on the Chinese law has drawn scrutiny from Western lawmakers and activists. HSBC and Standard Chartered Plc, which have expressed support of the national security law, for example, have faced criticism from UK officials that their actions enabled Beijing to undermine the rule of law in the former British colony. The two London-headquartered banks have said they believed the law would restore stability in Hong Kong. Both Hong Kong and Chinese officials have said the law was vital to plug holes in national security defenses, rejecting criticism from governments, including the United States and the United Kingdom, that China was violating its promise to safeguard Hong Kong’s freedom for 50 years after the 1997 handover.   Regulatory risks  Some wealth managers in Hong Kong say they are worried about the regulatory and reputation risks to their banks if charges under the sweeping security law are brought against some of their politically linked clients, three of the sources said. A top executive at a regional wealth manager said that his firm’s risk and compliance team prepared a list of top 10 Hong Kong individuals identified in local media as pro-democracy sympathizers within a couple of days of the enactment of the law on July 1, the anniversary of the handover. The executive said their firm checked its internal database to see if they had existing relationship with any of them and were “quite relieved” to see that they didn’t. Several elements of the law deal with the seizure of assets, including provisions to give a new police unit greater powers to freeze and confiscate funds and property as well as greater powers to obtain information. Companies can also face penalties, ranging from fines and suspension to the loss of business licenses. One investment manager at a Hong Kong-based hedge fund said he expected more people to come under scrutiny from their bankers now. “I think that if even a moderate democrat came through the door wanting to invest, you’d be thinking long and hard after this law,” the fund manager said.  
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The sudden cancellation of an offshore drilling project commissioned by Vietnam is raising fears that the Chinese government pressured it to stop, part of Beijing’s ongoing maritime sovereignty spat with Hanoi.   London-based drilling contractor Noble Corp. said July 9 its Noble Clyde Boudreaux semi-submersible had cancelled a previously announced project with Vietnam. News reports placed the drilling site off Vietnam’s east coast in a zone watched by Chinese survey vessels.   It’s unclear whether officials from Beijing forced the cancelation, but they have pressured other Vietnamese seabed oil drilling contracts in the past. The two countries contest nearby tracts of the broader South China Sea.   “They’re playing some kind of cat and mouse with China,” said Oh Ei Sun, senior fellow with the Singapore Institute of International Affairs. If, he said, “they’re doing drilling here and the Chinese vessel came, they might stop it for a few days or months and then resume it, and so on.”   Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Taiwan also claim all or parts of the 3.5 million-square-kilometer waterway, which is prized for fisheries as well as fossil fuel reserves. China says about 90% of the sea should come under its flag. Beijing has taken a military lead over other countries over the past decade.   Radio Free Asia reported July 13 that Vietnam had cancelled the contract as the Chinese government squeezes Southeast Asian nations that try to exploit South China Sea resources with foreign partners. A Chinese coast guard vessel is “patrolling” now near another Vietnamese oil rig, the report says.   FILE – A ship (top) of the Chinese Coast Guard is seen near a ship of the Vietnam Marine Guard in the South China Sea, about 210 km (130 miles) off shore of Vietnam, May 14, 2014.China has sent two survey ships to waters near Vietnam this year to date. China and Vietnam have rammed each other’s boats in the past. Their vessels got tangled in deadly clashes in 1974 and 1988.   In 2018, Spanish driller Repsol suddenly quit a Vietnamese project at the South China Sea feature Vanguard Bank, apparently under pressure from China. Vietnam still had outposts at the submerged feature as of mid-2019.   But Vietnam has not openly challenged China over the Noble Clyde project cancelation. Noble Corp. did not respond Monday to a request for comment.   Vietnam relies on oil drilling for resources, Oh said, and the Southeast Asian country has a history of “standing up” to China.   “Vietnam is known to stand up for its interests and they don’t want to be seen to be backing down from any kind of pressure from China, because the moment they do that, they would be susceptible to all kinds of pressure, domestically and in China,” said Eduardo Araral, associate professor at the National University of Singapore’s public policy school.   Hanoi may be waiting to see whether the United States acts on its behalf, analysts believe.   U.S. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo said last week his government would help South China Sea claimant states if violated by China. He hinted at using diplomatic and legal means and rejected China’s legal claims to the sea. China cites historic records to justify its use of the waters.   “Vietnam feels the threats from China, and maybe it will hamper their behavior in the South China Sea if the U.S. doesn’t move forward,” said Nguyen Thanh Trung, Center for International Studies director at University of Social Sciences and Humanities in Ho Chi Minh City.  The United States might intervene if it suits President Donald Trump’s politics but avoid armed conflict, said Alan Chong, associate professor at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore.   Trump has ramped up military, trade and economic pressure on China, a fellow superpower and former Cold War foe, since taking office in 2017. A reelection campaign and the COVID-19 crisis now dominate Trump’s agenda.   “I wouldn’t put it past him, if it suited him as a tactical move, but in terms of an actual intervention military wise, I don’t think that is a possibility given the domestic distractions at the moment,” Chong said.   Vietnam will nevertheless be “extremely happy” with Pompeo’s statement since its language supports the Vietnamese claim to an exclusive economic zone in the contested sea, said Derek Grossman, senior analyst with the Rand Corp. research institution in the United States. 
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In times of war, factories were converted from making cars to making tanks and ships. In the time of the coronavirus, Vietnam has retooled a smartphone factory to churn out life-critical ventilators. For many nations fighting COVID-19, ventilators have highlighted a struggle of life and death and of medical shortages. For Vietnam, which reported no local COVID-19 cases in three months, the ventilators are an unlikely story of a little engine that could — that is, could produce machines for a world in a pandemic.  A conglomerate, Vingroup, founded by Vietnam’s richest man, had never dabbled in medical devices before the pandemic, but now makes ventilators at a cost of $7,000 a piece, which is 30% less than the price of the Medtronic model on which they’re based, according to Bloomberg News. While other nations scramble to save patients and supply hospitals, Vietnam has the bandwidth to shift focus to making those supplies, in part, because it tackled the coronavirus early, resulting in 382 cases for all of 2020. Despite its smaller economy, Vietnam is now donating ventilators, masks, and other aid to richer nations. Many ‘firsts’ for Vietnam Vingroup announced this month that its first batch of ventilators have rolled off the factory line and been donated to Singapore, Russia, and Ukraine. The larger economies are still in the thick of the COVID-19 fight. Russia last week was accused of hacking western scientists for a vaccine, while Singapore reached the most COVID-19 cases in Southeast Asia in April after it overlooked its migrant worker population. “We have all seen the mutual support in the hardest of periods,” the Ambassador of Russia to Vietnam Konstantin Vnukov said this month. “The ceremony of awarding ventilators to the Russian Federation today continued to affirm our fruitful friendship.” When installing ventilators, all technicians must use gloves according to technical standards to ensure the quality of assembly.Vingroup has become a sprawling company that operates in nearly every sector in Vietnam. Billionaire Pham Nhat Vuong, who founded the company, told Bloomberg he wants it to keep helping the fast-growing nation reach milestone after milestone. That ranges from Vinfast, the first consumer car produced in and by Vietnam, to ventilators now, a crucial product that has become highly sought after amid the COVID-19 emergency.  No cases since April Perhaps no other company is as identified with Vietnam’s national brand as Vingroup. It has worked closely with the government to get its ventilators up to technical standards and approved to be shipped.  “The Ministry of Health will continue to accompany Vingroup and other manufacturers to develop products and facilitate early evaluation to put products into production, meeting the needs of society in the control and prevention of COVID-19,” said Nguyen Minh Tuan, the Director of the Department of Medical Equipment and Health Works under the Ministry of Health, in a press release sent out by Vingroup.  The company’s steps during the COVID-19 emergency have moved in parallel with those of the state. Vietnam identified domestic cases of the coronavirus early on, quarantined patients and two layers of their contacts, and restricted movement before the virus could become unmanageable. Without any local infections since April, the communist nation then lent its disease-fighting powers abroad, sending donations of ventilators, test kits, masks and other aid to recipients from Europe to Laos.  Vingroup said it does not make a profit on the ventilators and sent 500 to Russia, 300 to Ukraine and 200 to Singapore. It aims to ship another 1,600 machines by the end of August and to produce as many as 55,000 units a month. The ventilators are based on open-source technology made available through the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the company said. If Vingroup was to consider moving to mass production and profit making on the ventilators, government approval would be needed.   
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Several thousand anti-government protesters took to the streets in Thailand’s capital Saturday to demand amendments to the military-written constitution, new parliamentary elections and the end of repressive laws in the country.The protest, organized by the Liberation Youth group, was the largest since the government declared a state of emergency in March to deal with the coronavirus pandemic outbreak.Since then, the restrictive measures and social distancing have helped the government contain the spread of the virus, but they have also used as political weapons, to contain protests.Saturday’s 2,500 demonstrators gathered around Bangkok’s iconic Democracy Monument in the old part of the city, defying the ban on public gatherings to chant anti-government slogans and wave placards expressing their demands. 
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Several thousand anti-government protesters rallied in Thailand’s capital on Saturday to call for a new constitution, new elections and an end to repressive laws.Chanting and waving placards, the demonstrators, comprising mainly younger Thais, converged on Bangkok’s iconic Democracy Monument in the old part of the city, a popular venue for dissent.The gathering, organized by a group calling itself Liberation Youth, was the biggest of its kind since the government called a state of emergency in March to deal with the coronavirus.Protests against the government of former army chief Prayuth Chan-ocha had been drawing increasingly large crowds at the time, but tapered off quickly when several coronavirus clusters were confirmed and the emergency law was invoked.Lockdown measures and social distancing have since helped the government contain the spread of the virus, but it has retained emergency powers, which critics say it wields as a political weapon.The earlier protests were fueled by a February court ruling dissolving a popular opposition political party whose democracy-promoting policies had attracted substantial support among younger Thais. The supporters of the Future Forward party believed the group was targeted for its popularity and for being critical of the government and the military.The political atmosphere heated up again in June, when a prominent self-exiled Thai political activist was snatched off the street by unknown men in neighboring Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh. He has not been heard from since. Several other Thai dissidents in Laos, another neighboring country, were also mysteriously kidnapped in recent years, with the bodies of three later found floating in the Mekong River.Leaders at Saturday’s protest made speeches calling for sweeping change, and a radical rap group belted out a popular, acerbic political song.Organizers put the number of protesters at more than 2,000, with more arriving as darkness fell.Police ringed the monument and set up barriers to try to prevent the protesters from occupying it. Police loudspeakers played a recording of the text of the emergency law in an apparent warning that they considered the gathering illegal.Prayuth first took power when, as army chief, he led a coup to overthrow the elected government in 2014. He then retained the prime minister’s post in 2019 after an election that was widely denounced as free but not fair, with conditions skewed in favor of a military-dominated party both before and after polling.Under his deeply conservative leadership, the military and the royalist elite have consolidated their power, increasingly angering more progressive elements in Thai society. 
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Tokyo’s governor confirmed Friday the Japanese capital had 293 new daily cases, setting a record for new cases for the second straight day.At a news briefing, Governor Yuriko Koike suggested the higher number of confirmed cases reflects more aggressive testing.  More than 4,000 people a day are being tested, with a goal of 10,000.The governor urged social distancing, regularly disinfecting hands and other measures to curb the outbreak. She has also requested medical facilities make additional beds available for the expected surge in patients.While Japan never had a total lockdown, the government did declare an emergency and asked businesses to close and people to work from home beginning in April. That emergency was lifted in late May.But since that time, cases have started to rise again in metropolitan areas, with Tokyo seeing an average of more than 200 cases a day for the past seven days. Plans have been announced to call a second emergency as concerns rise the city reopened too quickly.Tokyo’s surge has prompted officials to exempt it from the “Go To Travel” campaign, which offers discounts for travel in the country to encourage tourism.Japan has so far avoided the massive number of cases experienced in the hardest hit nations, with fewer than 24,000 and about 1,000 deaths.Japan has been trying to keep economic activity going while avoiding the spread of the coronavirus, opening restaurants and theaters with limited seating and having store clerks work behind plastic shielding.
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