The Chinese capital is capable of screening almost 1 million people a day for the coronavirus, an official said on Sunday, as testing continued across the city to try to contain the spread of a fresh outbreak.Beijing has been expanding testing in the city of 20 million since a cluster of infections linked to a food wholesale market erupted over a week ago.The outbreak, the first in Beijing in months, has now surpassed previous peak numbers in the city in early February.Testing was initially focused on people who worked or shopped at the Xinfadi market or lived nearby but it has been expanded to include residents in many other parts of the city as well as food and parcel delivery workers.Since the new outbreak, capacity has more than doubled to more than 230,000 tests daily at 124 institutions, Gao Xiaojun, spokesman for the Beijing Health Commission, told a press briefing.The tests are done on samples collected from multiple people in one test tube, meaning the city can get results from almost 1 million people daily, he added. The same pooling of samples was also carried out in Wuhan last month to quickly ramp up daily testing capacity after a cluster of new cases there raised worries about a second wave of infections.Gao also said that provinces including Hubei and Liaoning had sent about 200 people to Beijing to boost staff in laboratories, further helping to increase testing capacity. 
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In Vietnam, those who enter a cafe have a good chance of meeting a security guard who sprays their hands with disinfectant. Or, if getting on a bus, they will be told to put on a mask and sit one row apart from others.Half a year into the COVID-19 pandemic, Vietnamese still practice health measures here and there, though the nation reported no deaths from the disease and, for more than two months, no local infections.The statistics put Vietnam in a unique spot as the biggest nation by population to report no deaths, despite its border with China and limited resources. The statistics have ignited a debate, pitting those skeptical that a one-party state could have such success without fixing the data against those who resent the criticism.There are autocracies like China and Iran, suspected of covering up COVID-19 deaths, and open societies like New Zealand and South Korea, whose success has gone unquestioned. Vietnam finds itself somewhere in between.It is hard for outsiders to verify official data, though health experts say Vietnam headed off a full-blown calamity because of its drastic and early action. The government was hyper-aware of the threat to hospital and quarantine capacity.In a meeting March 24, Ho Chi Minh City leaders said the nation could handle 1,000 cases of the coronavirus. Beyond that, they feared the health system could be inundated, as in Italy and Spain.“During the next 10 days to two weeks, do not allow the number of cases to exceed 1,000 nationwide, otherwise the risk of disease outbreaks is very high,” a summary of the meeting on the city government website said.Vietnam reported 349 coronavirus cases so far in 2020.Timing was nearly as important as substance. The U.S. and Vietnam both reported their first cases in the same week in January. The U.S. could have avoided 36,000 COVID-19-related deaths if it had begun a lockdown March 8 instead of March 15, according to Columbia University. By contrast, Vietnam saw the disease as a threat early on, treating its first patient in January and proceeding to contact trace and restrict movement.Timing was critical because of the virus’ ability to spread exponentially. The Ho Chi Minh City government said, for instance, that for every 300 people infected, 84,000 people had to quarantine. It is likely that Vietnam did not have to cover up mass infections and deaths because it acted before the virus could reach that point.“If it was hit with the thousands, ten thousands, hundreds of thousands of cases that are being seen in other countries, it also would be overwhelmed like other countries,” Todd Pollack, head of the Harvard Medical School Partnership for Health Advancement in Vietnam, said on U.S. television network PBS. “But, at the current state, that’s not the situation here.”In addition to national coordination, targeted testing and isolation, Vietnam can decree measures regardless of public debate, like tapping a national security network to monitor the physical and virtual space. The government Vietnam News agency reported on the March 24 meetings of the Ho Chi Minh City People’s Committee.“Standing vice chairman of the People’s Committee, Le Thanh Liem, urged local authorities and other relevant agencies to visit every house to find out if anyone has come from other countries since March 8 and test and quarantine anyone at risk at home or quarantine areas,” the report said.Double-edged swordIn April, U.S. President Donald Trump pondered if injecting disinfectant could cure the coronavirus. Had a Vietnamese suggested such a remedy with no scientific basis on Facebook, it would not have lasted long with the government censors. This presents the double-edged sword of local controls on media.On one hand, Vietnam used fines and takedown orders to curb the spread of false information about the virus, as have other nations. On the other hand, the controls continue a history of censorship of information that the Southeast Asian government considers unfavorable.Social media allowed some false information to spread in Vietnam, but also greatly heightened people’s awareness of the virus and what they should do, concluded a study by 11 authors published in April in Sustainability, a science journal.Vietnam’s success, they said, came from “mobilizing citizens’ awareness of disease prevention without spreading panic, via fostering genuine cooperation between government, civil society and private individuals.”  
  
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For Jimmy Lai, a prominent pro-democracy figure and the founder of Hong Kong’s best-selling newspaper Apple Daily, the prospect of going to jail had never felt so real.  
   
“Things are getting so bad, anything like this can happen any day,” he said.  
   
Facing seven charges, including organizing and participating in unauthorized assemblies and inciting others to take part in unauthorized assembly, the 72-year-old media tycoon looked fatigued as he sat down in his office, though his usual feisty spirit picked up as he started talking.  
   Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
download this video to view it offline.Download File360p | 18 MB480p | 25 MB Embed” />Copy Download AudioHong Kong Media Tycoon Laments Hong Kong’s Future Under Looming National Security LawIn recent months, China has markedly tightened its control of Hong Kong, which has been roiled by a year-long, sometimes violent anti-government movement that Beijing said was mobilized by “foreign hostile forces.”  
   
The arrests of 15 veteran pro-democracy activists, including Lai, and the proclamation of China’s representative offices in Hong Kong that they were not bound by a clause in the city’s post-handover mini constitution, Basic Law, to stay out of local affairs, caused widespread concern.  
   
But nothing could have prepared people for China’s shock announcement in late May that it would impose a national security law to tackle secession, subversion, terrorism and foreign interference. “Foreign interference” was last week changed to “collusion with foreign power” in a move that critics say would target Hong Kongers who seek help from foreign countries on political issues.Trump Calls China’s Actions on Hong Kong ‘Plain Violations’  Trump also criticizes China’s handling of coronavirus and terminates funding to WHO  An explanation of the new law released Saturday by China’s official Xinhua News Agency says a new national security commission supervised by the Chinese government will be established in Hong Kong, and Chinese security agents will be stationed in the city to deal directly with some cases there.   
 
The national security law seems almost tailor made for Lai. After he met U.S. Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in Washington in July last year to discuss Hong Kong’s political crisis, the Chinese foreign ministry lambasted the meeting as a “foreign forces’ intervention.”  
   
The Chinese Communist Party mouthpiece, the People’s Daily, accused Lai of “disseminating separatist rhetoric” that “endangers national security” and “subverts the regime.” The August commentary also accused him of being “a running dog of the Western hostile forces”, “a pawn of the United States” and “a traitor” selling out on China’s interests. It ominously warned: “Be mindful of the settling of accounts in due course.”  
   
Does Lai worry that apart from the charges he now faces, which could land him in jail for a maximum of five years, the authorities would jail him using the more draconian national security law, which is in the process of being legislated in Beijing?   
   
“I’ll fight on until I can’t anymore,” said Lai. “If we fear, then there is no way we can do anything … it’s not the time to be careful, it’s the time to be brave.”   
   
With the national security law looming, worries abound whether many of Hong Kong’s publications will remain free to publish criticisms of the government. Civil liberties, including freedoms of the press and speech, are guaranteed to publications under Hong Kong’s postcolonial mini constitution, the Basic Law. There are now widespread fears, though, that China’s vaguely defined national security charges used to jail dissidents on the mainland soon will be applied to Hong Kong’s government critics.  
   
Lai has long been seen as a thorn in the sides of the Chinese and Hong Kong governments, with his free-wheeling Apple Daily, well known for its criticism of the authorities.   
   Hong Kong, Arms Control on Agenda of Planned US-China Meeting The planned one-day meeting between top diplomats in Honolulu would be first in 10 monthsAsked whether he will have to wind down the 25-year-old newspaper, Lai vowed to continue to run it “until the last day.”  
   
“I don’t know [when] the last day is,” he said. “If they jail me, the business will go on until it can’t go on.”  
   
Lai has long been a target of intimidation. He said he had for years been stalked by people of unknown identity. Last September, two masked men threw firebombs at the gate of his home, repeating a similar incident in 2015 when both his home and his office also were attacked by firebombs. Over the past week, his car has been closely tailed by several cars driven by unidentified people.  
   
“I’m sure I’m a target. But that doesn’t mean that I have to be frightened,” he said. “They’re just making a lot of noise, a lot of intimidation, just to frighten you.”  
   
Asked whether he believed Hong Kong’s protest movement has gone too far because a year on, the authorities have come up with a much more draconian law than the extradition bill that sparked the initial unrest, Lai did not agree. He lamented that the authorities’ hardened attitudes have done nothing to diffuse crises.  
   
“The only way they react is to suppress [and] to clamp down with police violence,” he said. “A few million people have come out to resist [but] they never asked why and tried to solve it. Instead [they] just suppress, suppress, suppress.”  
   China Threatens US Counter Measures if Punished for Hong Kong Law Beijing plans to pass a new security law for Hong Kong that bans treason, subversion and sedition after months of massive, often-violent pro-democracy protests last yearProtests were peaceful when they started in June last year, but as frustrations toward the government grew, and resentment against police brutality built, they turned increasingly violent.  
   
The government belatedly withdrew the extradition bill four months later, but protesters refused to stop, as they demanded that the government launch an independent investigation into police violence and provide amnesty for those arrested. Nearly 9,000 have been arrested since June last year, and the Chinese and Hong Kong governments repeatedly emphasized the need for harder measures against “rioters.”     
   
Lai believes China is acting tough on Hong Kong because it is facing the worst economic and social crises in decades. It is under unprecedented international scrutiny amid its strained relationship with the United States and industrialized nations, he said, and this added to its woes, as China’s economy has been hard hit by the coronavirus crisis.   
 
“The worse the internal situation is, the more they need outside [perceived] enemies to unite the people … so [they would] forget the hardship they face internally,” he said.   
   
Lai also believes Xi is taking advantage of the coronavirus crisis to act tough while western countries are preoccupied with fighting against the disease. Lai said Xi also needs to prove his competence and reaffirm his life mandate to his people, after many of his trademark projects, such as “One Belt, One Road” and the “Made in China 2025” plan — which seeks to transform the country from being a low-end manufacturer to high-tech producer —  ran into difficulties.  
   
Having escaped to Hong Kong from China via Macau in a stowaway fishing boat when he was 12, Lai has a deeper insight into the Chinese Communist Party than many. He believes its current approach will hurt not only Hong Kong but itself.  
   
“The problem with a system that concentrates all the power on the emperor is that you make stupid decisions because the people surrounding you will only second guess what you want, instead of telling you what is true,” he said.  
   
“Xi is thinking about not just being the emperor of China, but the emperor of the world,” he said. “I think Xi Jinping is somebody who just doesn’t have a worldly perspective … he’s Mao Zedong incarnated.”  
   
China’s recent “wolf warrior” diplomacy has made itself many enemies, but Lai believes it cannot win with the western nations reacting to its aggressive approach.  
   
“If they go on the way that was set out by Xi Jinping, definitely, China cannot go on for a very long time, because the world will be forced to isolate it or decouple with it. China has to change to adapt to the rule of the world,” he said.  
   
“China has never faced a world so scrutinizing. Before, the world was very friendly to China because China is a big market, it is also the factory of the world. Now, I think the world is reconsidering its dependence on China,” he said.   
   
Lai said Xi has overlooked the importance of Hong Kong to China’s broader economic interest.  
   
“He thinks China is just so great and Hong Kong is only about 3 percent of their economy. But he forgets … that a lot of the investment in China has to go through Hong Kong. The contracts have to be signed in Hong Kong, because it is the only place that has the rule of law to protect the contracts. Without this place, a lot of the contracts would not be signed.”  
   
“He’s killing Hong Kong … the goose that lays golden eggs,” he said.  
   
Lai hopes that international pressure would force China at least to water down the national security law, but so far, China has shown no signs of backing down. Hours after China’s top diplomat Yang Jiechi and Pompeo concluded their meeting Wednesday in Hawaii, the draft national security law was put before the standing committee of the National People’s Congress (NPC), its top lawmaking body. The details of the draft law were released Saturday by the Chinese state media on Saturday.  
   
Lai said the law will spell the end of Hong Kong, as people will either emigrate or learn to live a subservient life.  
   
“For those like us who stay, we’ll fight on, but it will be a very feeble fight,” he said. “Less people will stay to fight with us, and those who don’t leave, they would just have to accept life like in China, to become subservient citizens and do whatever the government dictates.  
   
“Hong Kong will be finished, definitely. I have no doubt about it,” he sighed.
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Ten people are reported missing after a motorboat with 16 fishermen capsized in Indonesian waters, according to local officials quoted by AFP, the French News Agency, Saturday.Indonesia’s search and rescue agency said the boat sank Thursday as it was hit by strong waves in a strait, near the Anak Krakatau volcano.”Six were rescued alive on Friday and we continue searching for the 10 people still missing today,” the agency’s spokesman Muhammad Yusuf Latif told AFP, adding that the fishermen had attempted to swim to a nearby island.Indonesian rescue teams continued their search for survivors on Saturday.Lax safety standards at sea have made Indonesia prone to boat accidents.
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Malaysians say they’re feeling both excitement and jitters as the country’s economy opens back up and daily life moves a step closer to normal. Barbershops and hairdressers could reopen June 10, and schools will reopen in phases starting Wednesday.As Malaysia’s economy reopens rush hour traffic has picked up in Kuala Lumpur recently. (Dave Grunebaum/VOA)Rush hour traffic has steadily increased in the country’s largest city, Kuala Lumpur, after a stretch with relatively few cars on the road. Tables at some popular eateries are filling, up, although there are fewer tables available for customers because of social distancing requirements.“I feel great about it,” said Jeswynna Roy, 39, an English teacher finishing her chicken and rice lunch. “One of the first things I’m doing here is after three months I’m out for a meal with my husband.”Roy said she feels fortunate because her income and her husband’s are steady, but they have friends who are not so lucky.“We know some people who’ve completely lost their jobs who have got no earning power at all,” Roy said.“They have kids and they have rent to pay or mortgages to pay and there’s no money coming in. It makes me worry, how would you sleep at night, how do they go about day-to-day activities, thinking and worrying about where the next paycheck is coming from?”Navin Pillai, 23, center, graduated a few weeks ago from university with a degree in mechanical engineering. He says he won’t be surprised if he’s still looking for work a year from now. (Dave Grunebaum/VOA)Navin Pillai, 23, having a food court lunch with two friends, just graduated a few weeks ago with a mechanical engineering degree. Pillai said he has applied for about 20 jobs but would not be surprised to still be looking for work in a year.“There’s more competition and fewer job applications open to all these fresh graduates,” he said, adding that there are engineers with several years’ experience who have recently lost jobs.April data shows Malaysia’s unemployment rate at 5 percent which is a 30-year high.“We are talking about exports going down, investment going down and consumption probably being affected because of unemployment as well,” said Lau Zheng Zhou of the Kuala Lumpur-based Institute for Democracy and Economic Affairs.Before the COVID-19 crisis, Malaysia had started a major campaign to lure foreign tourists this year to the country’s beaches, jungle treks and places known for their cuisine, but global travel restrictions have abruptly altered those plans. The country also depends on petroleum exports.“The drop of the oil prices matters to the Malaysian economy especially on the ability of the government to finance its operations because one-third of our fiscal revenue, our tax revenue comes from petroleum-related sources,” Lau said.He added that Malaysia’s widely credited steps to contain the coronavirus should allow the economy to recover more quickly than those of other countries in the region but said Malaysia is probably heading toward a recession.Barbershops and hair salons in Malaysia were allowed to reopen on June 10, 2020. (Dave Grunebaum/VOA)“Malaysian growth depends a lot on the demand globally as well,” Lau said, noting Malaysia has an export-oriented economy.“We depend on the health of the United States, we depend on the health of China and the region as well. It doesn’t look very rosy now the global outlook,” he said.Eric Cheah, 61, a construction cost engineer, said his income has dropped significantly since March, and he expects this to continue for the rest of the year. His children are grown, so he doesn’t have to support them, but he and his wife are digging into savings and cutting back on expenses.“No vacation for this year or next year, I suppose, and less eating out in the fancy restaurants,” Cheah said. He and his wife used to go to a restaurant “once every couple of months, or three months,” he said, “but now we hardly go to a fancy restaurant.”“So we have to go to a normal coffee shop,” he said.Changes in people’s spending patterns ripple across the economy according to Lau. He said the country’s stimulus program, which includes wage subsidies, is cushioning the economic blow but the government must start thinking further down the road, with “a mid- to long-term recovery plan to get us out of a crisis-fighting mode and into a recovery stage.” 
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Chinese prosecutors charged two detained Canadians with spying Friday in an apparent bid to step up pressure on Canada to drop a U.S. extradition request for a Huawei executive under house arrest in Vancouver.
Michael Kovrig was charged by Beijing on suspicion of spying for state secrets and intelligence. Michael Spavor was charged in Dandong, a city near the North Korean border, on suspicion of spying for a foreign entity and illegally providing state secrets.
The charges were announced by China’s highest prosecutor’s office in brief social media posts.  
Asked what evidence China had against the two, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said only that each is charged with “secretly gathering state secrets for overseas forces with particularly serious consequences.”
“The facts are clear and the evidence solid and sufficient,” Zhao told reporters at a daily briefing. Zhao gave no details.
Both men have been held for 18 months. They were detained shortly after the December 2018 arrest of Meng Wanzhou, a top executive at Chinese tech giant Huawei. The daughter of Huawei’s founder was arrested at the request of U.S. authorities who want her on fraud charges related to trade with Iran.  
A Canadian judge ruled this month that the U.S. extradition case against Meng could proceed to the next stage.  
China has denied any explicit link between her case and the lengthy detention of the two Canadian men, but outside experts see them as tied and Chinese diplomats have strongly implied a connection.  
Meng has been released on bail while her extradition case proceeds in court and is residing in one of her two Vancouver mansions where she is reportedly working on a graduate degree. Kovrig and Spavor are being held at an undisclosed location and up to now, have been denied access to lawyers or family members.
 
China has also sentenced two other Canadians to death and suspended imports of Canadian canola, while saying those moves were also unrelated to Meng’s case.  
Relations between Canada and China are at their lowest point since the Chinese military’s bloody crackdown on pro-democracy protests centered on Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in 1989.  
The tensions appear to be causing further harm to Huawei’s reputation in the Americas, with two of Canada’s three major telecommunication companies announcing earlier this month that they’ve decided not to use the Chinese tech giant for their next-generation 5G wireless network.
Bell Canada announced that Sweden-based Ericsson will be its supplier and Telus Corp. later announced that it had also selected Ericsson and Nokia.  
Huawei is the world’s biggest supplier of network gear used by phone and internet companies, but has long been seen as a front for spying by China’s military and its highly skilled security services.  
The U.S. has urged Canada to exclude Huawei equipment from their next-generation wireless networks, saying Huawei is legally beholden to the Chinese regime. The United States and Australia have banned Huawei, citing concerns it is an organ of Chinese military intelligence — a charge the company denies.  
Canada’s diplomats in China have been meeting regularly with their detained citizens but there was no immediate comments on the new indictments.
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A “sophisticated state-based cyber actor” has been attempting to hack a wide range of Australian organizations for months and had stepped up its efforts recently, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Friday.The attacks have targeted all levels of the government, political organizations, essential service providers and operators of other critical infrastructure, Morrison said in a news briefing in Canberra.”We know it is a sophisticated state-based cyber actor because of the scale and nature of the targeting,” he said.Morrison said there were not a lot of state actors that could launch this sort of attack, but Australia will not identify which country was responsible.Australia’s Defense Minister Linda Reynolds said advice showed no large-scale personal data breaches from the attack, as she urged businesses and organizations to ensure any web or email servers are fully updated with the latest software and the use of multifactor authentication.An Australian government source said Morrison’s public declaration was an attempt to raise the issue with those who could be targeted.Australia’s chief cyber intelligence agency said its investigations have so far found no evidence that the actor attempted to be “disruptive or destructive” once within the host’s network.Morrison said he spoke with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Thursday about the issue, while briefings to other allies have also been conducted.The revelation comes after Reuters reported Canberra had determined in March last year that China was responsible for a hacking attack on Australia’s parliament. Australia never publicly identified that source of the attack, and China denied it was responsible.A U.S. security ally, Australia strained ties with its largest trading partner, China, by pushing for an international inquiry into the source and spread of the new coronavirus that first emerged in the central Chinese city of Wuhan late last year.  
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Prosecutors in Tokyo say former Japanese Justice Minister Katsuyuki Kawai, and his wife, Anri Kawai, were arrested Thursday over allegations they engaged in vote buying during last year’s election.  In a statement, Tokyo prosecutors said the couple paid about $15,900 to five people last year to get her elected in the 2019 upper house election, in which she won a seat.Katsuyuki Kawai, a close political ally of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, served as justice minister for only a month last year, resigning in October when vote buying allegations first surfaced. He had previously served as a foreign policy adviser to Abe. Both Kawaiis have denied the allegations to Japanese media.At a news conference Thursday, Abe offered an apology regarding the arrests, saying “it is very regrettable that the incumbent lawmakers (ex-Justice Minister Katsuyuki Kawai and his wife Anri Kawai), who used to belong to our party, were arrested today. I’m keenly aware of my responsibility as I once appointed him (Katsuyuki Kawai) Justice Minister. “Observers see the arrests as blow for Abe as his support among voters was already declining because of what is seen as his clumsy handling of the COVID pandemic, among other domestic issues.
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A new coronavirus outbreak in Beijing saw a decline in daily cases Thursday while the United States increased pressure on China’s leaders to reveal what they know about the pandemic.
The outbreak first detected at a wholesale market in the capital last week has infected at least 158 people in China’s biggest resurgence since the initial outbreak was brought under control in March. The city reported 21 new cases of COVID-19 on Thursday, down from 31 on Wednesday.
City officials said close contacts of market workers, visitors and other connections were being traced to locate all possible cases as quickly as possible, with testing and prevention measures being taken.
At a meeting in Hawaii with a top Chinese diplomat, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo urged China to reveal all it knows about the pandemic.
Pompeo “stressed the need for full transparency and information sharing to combat the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and prevent future outbreaks,” the U.S. State Department said in a statement about his meeting with the Communist Party’s top diplomat, Yang Jiechi.
Pompeo has joined President Donald Trump in criticizing China’s response to the outbreak, including giving credence to a theory that the virus may have emerged from a Chinese laboratory in Wuhan.
The World Health Organization last month bowed to calls from most of its member states to investigate how it managed the response to the virus, but the evaluation would stop short of looking into the origins of the virus. China maintains that controlling the virus’s spread should be given priority.
China is also being called on to relieve the virus’ financial consequences in Africa.  
South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa addressed Chinese leader Xi Jinping during an online China-Africa summit. He reminded China that African nations are seeking significant debt relief as they battle the pandemic.  
African nations have called for a two-year suspension of debt payments and other relief that would allow them to focus resources on the health crisis. But China, Africa’s biggest creditor, has not indicated it will offer a sweeping solution and experts say it will focus instead on bilateral arrangements with countries.
Ramaphosa urged China to offer more relief or propose alternatives, warning that “the worst is still to come” for Africa in the pandemic.  
Xi in his speech said he hopes the international community, “especially developed countries and multilateral financial institutions, will act more forcefully on debt relief and suspension for Africa.”
The virus has infected more than 8.3 million people since it emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan late last year. More than 448,000 people have died from COVID-19, according to a Johns Hopkins tally of official data. Both numbers are believed to be deeply undercounted due to limited testing and other factors.
The United States has the most cases and deaths by far, with 2.1 million people infected and more than 117,000 dead. Americans have wrestled with deep emotional divides between those who support lockdowns and restrictions like wearing masks to stop the spread of the virus and those who believe such measures infringe on personal freedoms.
Other countries were confronting politicized debates and growing infections.
India recorded its highest one-day increase of 12,281 cases, but Prime Minister Narendra Modi rejected imposing a new lockdown, saying the country has to think about further unlocking the economy.  
Turkish authorities made masks mandatory in three major cities following an uptick in cases since the country allowed the reopening of many businesses.
Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández was hospitalized with COVID-19 and pneumonia as the country struggles under the pandemic’s strain and cases rise sharply in the capital. Mexico’s cases continued to increase at near-record levels with few signs of a decrease, even as the economy starts reopening.
More than a week after New Zealand declared itself virus-free, the country has confirmed three new cases. The South Pacific country appears to have eliminated community transmission of the virus, but officials confirmed a man arriving from Pakistan tested positive after earlier confirming cases in two women returning from Britain.
While air travel is a concern about transmission of the virus as economies reopen, two Australian universities are planning a charter flight for likely the first foreign students to return to Australian campuses.  
Australian National University and Canberra University expect to fly 350 students from Singapore in late July. The students would go into hotel quarantine on arrival.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison supported the universities’ plan, which would be a pilot program for reopening Australia’s lucrative education sector.
“I’m looking to get our economy as close as back to normal as we possibly can and to push the envelope in every possible area,” Morrison told reporters.
But China, which is Australia’s largest source of foreign students, providing 200,000 last year, has warned its citizens to stay away from the country because of the risk of pandemic-related racism. China opposes Australia’s calls for an independent investigation into the origins of and responses to the pandemic.
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Ten days ago Jacinda Ardern said her South Pacific country of 5 million people had managed to “crush the virus” through some of the strictest lockdown measures in the world.Now New Zealand’s prime minister is apologizing for a bungle involving two women who had flown home from Britain to visit a dying parent. The New Zealanders were mistakenly released from mandatory quarantine without being tested for COVID-19. All returning citizens must go into state-managed isolation for two weeks and be tested twice for the new coronavirus, once on day 3 and again on day 12. The women later tested positive for the disease.Screening of more than 300 people who had come into contact with the pair is continuing. They had traveled from Britain via Doha, Qatar, and on to Brisbane, Australia, and then flew to New Zealand. Officials say it is unclear where they were infected.Ardern says it was an inexcusable error.“This case represents an unacceptable failure of the system,” she said. “It should never have happened, and it cannot be repeated. From the beginning we have taken an extraordinarily cautious approach at the border. That is why we have required every returning New Zealander to go into a facility that we manage. Our borders and the controls at our borders must be rigorous. They must be disciplined.”The New Zealand military has been put in charge of quarantine facilities. Early release of those in isolation on compassionate grounds has been suspended.Opposition politicians have alleged that the handling of the quarantine system seemed “incredibly loose” with reports of people in isolation at hotels mingling in bars. There have been calls for New Zealand’s health minister, David Clark, to be dismissed.The two cases bring to an end 24 days of no reported coronavirus infections in New Zealand. The government has scrapped almost all of the disease control measures, although its international borders remain closed to foreign nationals.New Zealand has recorded just over 1,500 confirmed and probable COVID-19 cases. Twenty-two people have died.Health officials are warning against complacency, insisting there was “a pandemic raging outside our shores.”
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Prominent Chinese human rights lawyer Yu Wensheng has been sentenced to four years in prison on charges of inciting subversion of state power.Yu was detained in January 2018, hours after he provided journalists with a letter calling for constitutional reform.“This is a secret trial,” Yu’s wife Xu Yan told VOA Wednesday. “They didn’t tell me anything earlier regarding the legal procedure, I was ‘informed’ of the decision today.”She added that during the whole time Yu remained in detention, only his defense lawyer was allowed to meet with him twice. She had only seen a video of her husband since 2018.Nicholas Bequelin, Amnesty International’s Asia-Pacific Regional Director, said that Yu’s sentencing is nothing but a political persecution dressed up as legal process.“Not only was Yu prosecuted under baseless charges for the lawful and legitimate work he was conducting as a lawyer, his own lawyer was not even permitted to attend the sentencing hearing,” he said in a FILE – Xu Yan, the wife of Chinese lawyer Yu Wensheng, speaks during an interview in their apartment on the outskirts of Beijing, Jan. 19, 2018.Yu’s wife told VOA she received a phone call from Xuzhou City prosecutors on Wednesday, informing her that her husband had been sentenced to four years’ imprisonment and a further three years’ deprivation of political rights. The prosecutors added that Yu Wensheng will be appealing against the sentence.“But the person who called refused to give me his name and title, and I only confirm Yu’s sentence later with his lawyer, who was appointed by the court officials,” she told VOA.“I do not accept this sentence and express my strong protest against their secret sentencing,” she said. “This is a serious violation of the law.”VOA tried to reach judge Liu Mingwei from Xuzhou Intermediate People’s Court who had announced Yu’s sentence, but he was not available. Yu’s lawyer Zhao Qiang told VOA he cannot accept interview requests from a foreign media outlet.It remains unclear when authorities actually sentenced him.Meanwhile, VOA has learned that the wife of another prominent dissident has been repeatedly harassed by local officials.FILE – A web page of poet Wang Zang’s twitter postings with the words “Wearing black clothes, bald and holding an umbrella, I support Hong Kong” is seen on a computer screen in Beijing, China, Oct. 8, 2014.Wang Zang, an outspoken poet, was arrested on May 30 on charges of “inciting subversion of state.” His family doesn’t have any information about his whereabouts despite multiple visits to the local police station.Since then, his family says they have lost some measure of their freedom also.“Now 12-15 people just wonder around my building, there are four cars parked outside,” his wife Wang Li told VOA. “I’m under 24 hour surveillance. They took away my bank cards and my ID card, life is getting really hard.”Born in 1985 in Yunnan Province, Wang Zang is an outspoken freelance writer and artist critical of repressive government policies. He promoted free speech and democracy through his artwork and expressed support for detained activists. Authorities have repeatedly questioned Wang about his art performances, poetry, and social media postings in support of persecuted activists, lawyers, and political prisoners.China’s civil society and rights movement has been under increasing pressure since President Xi Jingping took office in 2012.  More than 200 Chinese human rights lawyers and activists were detained or questioned in a police sweep in 2015 that rights groups called “unprecedented.” 
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China raised its emergency warning to its second-highest level and canceled more than 60% of the flights to Beijing on Wednesday amid a new coronavirus outbreak in the capital. It was a sharp pullback for the nation that declared victory over COVID-19 in March and a message to the rest of the world about how tenacious the virus really is.
New infections spiked in India, Iran and U.S. states including Florida, Texas and Arizona as authorities struggled to balance restarting economic activity without accelerating the pandemic.  
European nations, which embarked on a wide-scale reopening this week, looked on with trepidation as the Americas struggled to contain the first wave of the pandemic and Asian nations like China and South Korea reported new outbreaks.
Chinese officials described the situation in Beijing as “extremely grave.”  
“This has truly rung an alarm bell for us,” Party Secretary Cai Qi told a meeting of Beijing’s Communist Party Standing Committee.  
After a push that began June 14, the city expects to have tested 700,000 people by the end of the day, said Zhang Qiang, a Beijing party official. About half of them were workers from the city’s food markets, nearby residents and close contacts.
The party’s Global Times said 1,255 flights to and from the capital’s two major airports were scrapped by Wednesday morning, about two-thirds of those scheduled.  
Since the virus emerged in China late last year and spread worldwide, there have been more than 8.1 million confirmed cases and at least 443,000 deaths, according to a tally kept by Johns Hopkins University. Experts say the true toll is much higher, due to the many who died without being tested and other factors.
The U.S. has the most infections and deaths in the world, with a toll that neared 117,000 on Wednesday, surpassing the number of Americans who died in World War I.
Arizona reported a daily high of nearly 2,400 new infections for a total of more than 39,000, while in Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott insisted the state’s health care system could handle the fast-rising number of new cases and hospitalizations.  
Tuesday marked the eighth time in nine days that Texas set a new high for COVID-19 hospitalizations at 2,518. State health officials reported 2,622 new cases.
“It does raise concerns, but there is no reason right now to be alarmed,” Abbott said.  
Texas began aggressively reopening its economy May 1. Abbott noted that Texans may have become lax in wearing masks or practicing social distancing and urged people to stay home as much as possible.
Canada and the U.S. extended to July 21 a deal to keep their border closed to nonessential travel, with many Canadians fearing cases arriving from the U.S.
As the U.S. struggles with the first wave of the virus, other countries where it was widely thought to be under control faced disturbing developments.
In South Korea, authorities reported 43 new cases amid increased public activity. Authorities said 25 of them came from around Seoul, where hundreds of infections have been linked to nightclubs, church gatherings, e-commerce workers and door-to-door salespeople. Twelve of the new cases came from international arrivals.
Not long after declaring itself virus-free, New Zealand saw a reemergence of the virus. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern assigned a top military leader to oversee the border quarantines after what she described as an “unacceptable failure” by health officials.
Two New Zealand citizens who had returned from London to see a dying relative were allowed to leave quarantine before being tested. After the women tested positive, New Zealand began tracing their potential contacts to ensure the virus is contained.
Their cases raised the specter that international air travel could ignite a new surge of the virus just as countries seek to boost devastated tourism industries.
China also limited other travel around the capital, keying in on hot spots. Beijing had essentially eradicated local transmissions until recent days, with 137 new cases since last week.
On Wednesday, the city of 20 million raised its threat level from 3 to 2, canceling classes, suspending reopenings and strengthening requirements for social distancing. China had relaxed many lockdown controls after the Communist Party declared victory over the virus in March.
India, with the fourth-highest caseload after the U.S., Brazil and Russia, added more than 2,000 deaths to its tally after Delhi and Maharashtra states included 1,672 previously unreported fatalities. Its death toll of 11,903 is now eighth-highest in the world. India has reported 10,000 new infections and more than 300 deaths each day for the last two weeks.
Iran’s latest outbreak  comes after a major Muslim holiday last month and as travel and lockdown restrictions were relaxed. Health Minister Saeed Namaki said he realized the extent of the challenge when he took a domestic flight.  
“Many people have become careless, frustrated with wearing masks,” he said. “They did not observe (social) distancing in the flight’s seating and the airliner’s ventilation system was not working.”
In Europe, which has seen over 184,000 virus-related deaths, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez announced the country will hold a ceremony July 16 to honor its more than 27,000 dead.  
German officials said 400 people at a large western meatpacking plant had tested positive for COVID-19. The industry has seen several outbreaks in recent weeks, prompting the government to impose stricter safety rules.
Denmark’s health minister urged anyone who joined a large racial injustice protest on June 7 to be tested “whether you have symptoms or not” after one person in the crowd was found to be infected.
“As long as we have the virus in Europe and in Denmark, it will flare up. We are dealing with a very, very contagious disease,” said Health Minister Magnus Heunicke.
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