Police pursued pro-democracy protesters in shopping malls in Hong Kong Sunday, after permission for a Mother’s Day march was denied.As the coronavirus outbreak subsides in Hong Kong, more protesters, demonstrating against Beijing’s power in the semi-autonomous city, are answering online calls to action.Sunday’s protests were comprised of smaller groups in multiple shopping malls in Hong Kong, singing, chanting, and holding signs while evading police officers.At least one person was arrested, according to local media.Smaller protests have been noted around Hong Kong in recent weeks, indicating the potential for renewed calls for autonomy seen in massive protests last year.Political tensions have escalated in Hong Kong after Beijing’s top representative office in the city said it was not bound by a law that restricts interference by other mainland Chinese agencies in the former British colony.In recent weeks, Hong Kong’s law enforcement authorities arrested 15 pro-democracy activists, including Martin Lee, 81, a move the U.S. condemned.Before the COVID-19 outbreak, Hong Kong was engulfed by several months of massive anti-government protests last year, initially sparked by a controversial extradition bill.  The protests evolved into a demand for greater democracy.Although the bill was later withdrawn, the demonstrations continued for months. 
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Former U.S. President Barack Obama says current U.S. President Donald Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic has been “an absolute chaotic disaster.”  In a conference call with former staff members, Obama said, “It has been an absolute chaotic disaster when that mindset of ‘what’s in it for me’  and ‘to heck with everybody else’ — when that mindset is operationalized in our government.”  The U.S. leads the world in the number of cases and deaths from the virus.  More than 1.3 million people in the U.S. have been infected and nearly 80,000 people have died.  In this April 18, 2020 photo provided by the Office of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo, Gov. Cuomo provides a coronavirus update during a press conference in the Red Room at the State Capitol in Albany.In New York, the U.S. epicenter of the outbreak, Governor Andrew Cuomo said Saturday that three children have died and more than 70 other children have fallen ill from a syndrome associated with the virus.   Children were initially thought not to be as susceptible to the virus, but reports are beginning to emerge challenging that. Like other countries, the U.S. does not have adequate supplies of test kits, meaning the sickest people get tested before those with mild symptoms, raising the possibility those with mild or no symptoms may not get tested at all and go uncounted. Pushing to reopen the U.S. from measures meant to slow the spread of the coronavirus, President Donald Trump has recently touted the U.S. testing system.  But the system has been criticized for failures in the critical early weeks of the outbreak and its ongoing underperformance compared to some other countries.  During a recent meeting with Texas Governor Greg Abbott, Trump said Germany has a “very low mortality rate like we do.” In fact, the U.S. has reported COVID-19 deaths at a rate of 234 per 1 million people, compared to Germany’s reported rate of 90 fatalities per million.  President Donald Trump speaks during a meeting about the coronavirus response in the Oval Office of the White House, May 7, 2020, in Washington.On Friday, Trump insisted “testing isn’t necessary,” an indication of his increasing tendency to reject the advice of health experts. The Trump administration continues to defend its decision not to release a detailed coronavirus reopening plan for the U.S., maintaining it would have been too narrowly focused for the country’s 50 states. Germany is grappling with new outbreaks since it began easing restrictions. The Robert Koch Institute said Sunday the infection rate had gone up to 1.1.  The infection rate, known as the reproduction rate, is growing when the rate exceeds 1.1.   There have also been outbreaks at three slaughterhouses in Germany.  South Korea has shut down more than 2,100 bars and other establishments in Seoul after new coronavirus outbreaks were linked to people who frequented nightclubs last weekend after the government relaxed social distancing guidelines. Many of the infections were traced to a 29-year-old man who went to three nightclubs before testing positive.  Schools in South Korea were scheduled to begin reopening this week, but that may be delayed after the new outbreaks while officials say probes into the new cases would determine the next steps.   Worldwide, the number of confirmed coronavirus cases has surpassed 4 million. The global death tally is nearly 280,000, according to Johns Hopkins University statistics. In central Afghanistan Saturday, clashes between aid-seeking protesters and police have claimed the lives of at least four civilians, including a journalist, and injured 14 others, officials said.  
  
The violence erupted as a coronavirus-induced shutdown and partial border closures with neighboring countries disrupted food deliveries into landlocked Afghanistan.  
 
Saturday’s clashes broke out after dozens of people gathered outside the governor’s office in impoverished Ghor province to protest what they said was a lack of official assistance for their poverty-stricken families. 
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An executive order issued last week proposes to “monitor and replace” any U.S. power grid equipment made by the nation’s foreign adversaries.Analysts said it would mainly affect Chinese-made products like electrical transformers.President Donald Trump signed an executive order on May 1 prohibiting bulk power system equipment from foreign companies in the U.S. grid, citing security concerns.The U.S. Department of Energy noted that under the current rules, contracts are awarded to the lowest bidder when it comes to bulk power system procurement, and that creates a “vulnerability that can be exploited by those with malicious intent.”U.S. Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette said that it is imperative that “the bulk-power system be secured against exploitation and attacks by foreign threats.”Analysts believe this means that the United States will set up a whitelist for the procurement of such equipment. Although the order did not name any specific country, observers say China and Russia are the two main countries most capable of posing a threat to the U.S. power grid.“It’s an important set of issues and similar to the debate that’s occurring around (companies like) Huawei, ZTE in 5G. Clearly you want to have visibility and confidence across your entire supply chain,” Frank J. Cilluffo, director of Auburn University’s McCrary Institute for Cyber and Critical Infrastructure Security, told VOA.He added that the move is a “prudent step” aimed at securing “the most critical of critical infrastructure,” because virtually all other infrastructure rely on the power grid to function.“Just because the dependence is so great. When you look at the implications of COVID-19 and everyone working from home, people are becoming more and more aware of some of those vulnerabilities,” he said. “I think you’re going to see closer scrutiny across all of our critical infrastructures.”The term “bulk-power system” refers to facilities and control systems necessary for national power grids.’Identify, monitor and replace’Under the executive order, the DOE will review control center, large-scale power generation machines, power generation turbine engines, high-voltage circuit breakers, transformers and other electrical power equipment, to “identify, monitor and replace as appropriate.”The U.S. Department of Commerce also announced on Monday that it will start a Section 232 investigation to determine if the volume of imported transformers and related parts threatens America’s national security.A DOE official said that U.S. electric power companies are buying national electric-grid systems, such as power transformers from foreign adversaries, for their low prices, according to Politico.Lot of questions swirling around this exec order. A senior DOE official told me they it’s necessary because some utilities were still buying transformers, capacitors and other bulk power system equipment from adversaries cited in the 2019 DNI worldwide threat assessment: pic.twitter.com/IgMAd54wll— Gavin Bade (@GavinBade) May 1, 2020China has been exporting large power transformers to the U.S. at competitive prices. Its domestic transformer market is showing signs of overcapacity.A DOE report in 2014 said that there are about 30 manufacturers in China that can produce transformers of 220 KV or kilovolts and above, and large international manufacturers such as ABB were setting up factories in China.Charles Durant, deputy director of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Counterintelligence Office, noted in 2019 that over the past decade, more than 200 Chinese large power transformers have entered the U.S. energy system.“Before that, this number was zero.”Cilluffo told VOA that there were precedents of hackers attacking a country’s power grid.On Dec. 23, 2015, the Ukrainian power system suffered a cyberattack that caused a large power outage. Ukraine said that Russian security services were behind the attack.“So if you think about our dependency on electricity, it’s not only that immediate structure, it transcends to all of our critical infrastructure,” said Cilluffo.
 
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Press freedom advocates say China’s censorship of a letter co-authored by 27 European Union ambassadors that contained a reference to the origins of the coronavirus is another example of how the lack of press freedom in the country has caused problems for the world.
 
A sentence in the EU letter, which referred to China as  the point of origin of the outbreak, was deleted when it was published in the Wednesday edition of the English language newspaper China Daily to mark the 45th anniversary of the grouping’s diplomatic ties with China.
 
The full version, which appeared on the websites of EU embassies to China, said “the outbreak of the coronavirus in China, and its subsequent spread to the rest of the world over the past three months, has meant that our pre-existing plans have been side-tracked.”  
 
But the edited version published in state media omitted the words, “in China, and its subsequent spread to the rest of the world over the past three months.”  
 China’s censorship
 
The European Union Thursday expressed regret but seemed to accept the edit.
 
“China has state-controlled media. There is censorship, that’s a fact,” EU foreign affairs spokesperson Virginie Battu-Henriksson said in Brussels. But she said agreeing to the letter’s censored publication meant the bloc could engage the Chinese on other key EU issues, including climate change, human rights and the pandemic response.
 
Cédric Alviani, head of Reporters Without Borders’ (RSF) East Asia bureau, said the incident showed that China repeatedly takes advantage of the media systems in western democracies to control narratives in its favor, while using its state media to mislead the world.  
 
“We call on the democracies to resist and never ever to compare the Chinese propaganda media with independent media that respect journalism ethics,” Alviani told VOA.
 
Alviani was referring to comparisons made by the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of East Asian and Pacific affairs.
 No comparisons
 
The bureau Thursday tweeted that “last night, @washingtonpost [The Washington Post] carried Amb Cui’s [Chinese Ambassador to the U.S. Cui Tiankai] Op-Ed because that’s what freedom of the press looks like. Also last night, [U.S. Deputy National Security Adviser] Matt Pottinger’s speech on Weibo [China’s equivalent to Twitter] disappeared within 5 minutes because that’s what censorship looks like.”
 
In his Washington Post op-ed, Cui called for an end to the “blame game” over the pandemic, saying allegations blaming China for the outbreak’s spread risked “decoupling” the world’s two largest economies.
 
He said, “it’s time to focus on the disease and rebuild trust between our two countries… and restart the global economy.”
In his Monday speech, Pottinger praised whistleblower doctor Li Wenliang and several citizen journalists, calling them the true torch carriers of the spirit of the May 4 Movement, which ushered in a modern China a century ago.    
 
Alviani said Chinese media, which works as the party state’s mouthpiece and never hesitates to exercise censorship, are no comparison to free and independent press in the West.
 
He also cautioned readers against Cui’s opinions in The Washington Post, which he believed are in no way fair, reliable and fact-based. Instead, he described the opinion as propaganda from a regime that constantly violates the press freedom.A copy of an English-language China Daily newspaper is seen in an illustration photo from the paper’s Facebook page.China’s double standards
 
Michael Chugani, a columnist in Hong Kong, said the EU letter, Pottinger’s speech and Cui’s opinion in The Washington Post are some of the many examples of Chinese media’s double standard.  
 
Chugani, in his Thursday column in the Economic Journal, argued that “China is the global king in abusing free market rules” because it has, time and again, weaponized its economy to achieve political aims.
 
For example, China banned Norwegian salmon for years when Norway awarded the Nobel Peace Prize to human rights activist Liu Xiaobo in 2010, he said.
 
That abuse “also applies to China’s press freedom,” he told VOA in a written reply.  
 
The Chinese government has increasingly applied ruthless persecution of independent journalists.
 Longest jail term
 
One recent example is Chen Jieren, a former state media journalist-turned anti-corruption blogger who was sentenced to 15 years in prison last Thursday – the longest sentence ever handed down to a journalist under the administration of Chinese President Xi Jinping.  
 
Reporters Without Borders has called for Chen’s release, denouncing his sentence as “a throwback to the practice of the Maoist and is clearly designed to set an example and ensure that no Chinese journalist dares to question the regime again.”  
 
Chen, who was convicted of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble,” extortion and blackmail, “illegal business activity,” and “bribes,” was given a fine of $990,000 after a court in Hunan province concluded that he had taken more than that amount in bribes.
 
The court said Chen has “used the information network to publish false and negative information… attack and vilify the party and the government.”
 
Chinese Human Rights Defenders also urged Chen’s release, saying in a statement that his “punishment sends a chilling signal” to his peers.  
 Journalist or ‘fraud’?
 
But Li Datong, a former colleague of Chen’s at China Youth Daily, called the anti-corruption blogger a fraud.
“He’s not a legitimate journalist. He’s basically a hooligan. It’s inappropriate to portray him as the embodiment of justice because much of what he had done was profit driven. He has a questionable integrity,” Li said.  
 
Li, however, agreed that there’s little room for Chinese independent journalists to freely report as the authorities have tightened controls on the press and speech freedom.
 
Admitting that it’s hard to judge if accusations against Chen are legitimate, RSF’s Alviani remained convinced that his sentence is too harsh.  
“What is sure is that Chen Jieren had denounced the corruption of some members of the [Communist] party. And for that, he shouldn’t be punished with such a harsh sentence,” he said.
 
“I want to add that, in China, a prison sentence of such a length equals to a death sentence because of the very poor quality of the Chinese prisons,” he added.
 
Chen was arrested after he disclosed alleged corruption by local party officials in Hunan in mid-2018.  
 
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Marine life in the politically disputed South China Sea took another hit over the past year, researchers said, due to overfishing and lack of international efforts to protect species.Vessels from multiple Asian countries are going farther out into the 3.5 million-square-kilometer sea and casting deeper because coastal waters yield increasingly little, scholars and published research indicate. Giant clam harvesting, added to use of  cyanide and dynamite bombing for fish, damaged coral reefs last year, the analysts said.Marine life in the sea that stretches from Taiwan southwest to Singapore comes into focus every May, when China declares a moratorium on fishing above the 12th parallel, which encompasses waters most frequented by China but bisecting both Vietnam and the Philippines. The bans that began in 1995 will last this year from May 1 to August 16.“We’re all in this pretty rapid decline when it comes to biodiversity in the South China Sea and we certainly don’t see any evidence that anybody is doing anything about it,” said Gregory Poling, director of the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative under the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.Fishing in the sea expanded rapidly in the 1980s and early 1990s, to about 10 million tons per year but then started stagnating, researchers Cui Liang of China’s Xiamen University and Daniel Pauly from the University of British Columbia said in a 2017 paper.Since then, the study said, boats have fished deeper and caught smaller fish. Still, the South China Sea accounted for 12 percent of the global fish catch just five years ago, according to CSIS. Analysts could not estimate the total 2019 catch volume because of lack of national-level data.“The coastal areas are already overfished, so that means that fishing fleets from China, Taiwan, Korea, even Japan would actually be swarming now into the center of the South China Sea area, which means there is that concern about overfishing, and then, not to speak of that island-building processes that China conducted,” said Herman Kraft, a political science professor at University of the Philippines Diliman.Among the problems is continued use by Asian fishing crews of dynamite and cyanide bombing, the conservation group Global Underwater Explorers said on its website. The practice, which wrecks coral reefs and fish spawning zones, is “widespread throughout Asia and the South China Sea, from Indonesia to southern China,” the website said.CSIS pointed to “large-scale” clam harvesting and dredging for island construction. China has wrecked 40,000 acres of coral reef to build islets for human use, Poling said. Giant clam harvesting last year by Chinese boats hurt coral around Scarborough Shoal west of Luzon Island in the Philippines, media outlets in Manila said.Military groups in the sea’s Spratly Islands have shot turtles and seabirds, raided nests and fished with explosives, the World Wildlife Fund said on its website. One turtle species, the hawksbill, is endangered.Brunei, China, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam claim all or part of the sea that is also valuable because of its energy reserves and marine shipping lanes. An estimated 37 million people depend on fishing there for a living, while state-to-state conservation talks are rare.The declining fishery stocks push each country’s fleet to look harder for what’s left, Poling said. About 4 million Chinese fishing crew members are expected to obey China’s moratorium, but crews from other countries, which contest sovereignty over that tract of sea, are unlikely to change course because they do not recognize the Chinese claim.Most conservation efforts to date come from individual countries.About five years ago, academics in the Philippines suggested creating a protected area in the Spratlys, and the idea gained a following in government agencies, although not at the presidential level, Kraft said. Vietnam had proposed nearly 20 years ago that a separate160-square-kilometer tract of the archipelago become a protected area. Both countries control some of the Spratly islets.Coral in 3,500 square kilometers of open sea around the Taiwan-controlled Pratas islets showed improvement last year because the Taiwanese coast guard has stepped up patrols to keep foreign-registered fishing vessels away, said Chuang Cheng-hsien, a conservation section chief under the Marine National Park Headquarters. China also claims the three Pratas atolls.Eight or nine years ago, he said, foreign vessels would fish near the protected atolls.“They get pushed out now, so there’s a big difference in numbers between now and the past,” he said. “In that area there’s virtually no destruction by mechanized fishing boats.”  
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A Twitter war with Chinese nationalists has forged a new online alliance among social media users in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Thailand, highlighting public solidarity among some pro-democracy movements in Asia.The new “Milk Tea Alliance” got its name from the similarities among Taiwanese bubble tea, Hong Kong milk tea and Thai iced tea.It all began on Twitter when popular Thailand actor Vachirawat “Bright” Cheeva-aree shared a set of pictures, with some referring to Hong Kong as a country — considered blasphemous by China’s communist government. The tweet triggered a strong response from Chinese nationalists.Twitter is banned in China and users in the country must turn to virtual private networks (VPNs ) to access the platform. Some nationalists are part of a cyber entity referred to as “Wumao Dang” because they are paid to make comments. Wumao means 50 cents, because one comment is worth RMB 50 cents (or about a tenth of a U.S. dollar).To quell the online uproar, Bright, whose TV drama has been popular in China, quickly issued an apology, saying that he did not read the content clearly when he shared the post. “Next time there will be no mistake like this again,” he wrote.i’m feel so sorry about my thoughtless retweet too , i only saw the pictures and did not read the caption clearly. Next time there will be no mistake like this again.🙏🏼💙— bbright (@bbrightvc) April 10, 2020But the Chinese nationalists did not accept it. They discovered a post by Bright’s girlfriend Nnevvy, which talked about the possibility of the COVID-19 virus originating from a Wuhan lab.A meme war dubbed #Nnevvy began. Chinese nationalist “netizens” criticized the online Thais, claiming that their alleged “ignorance” of Chinese history led them to their views on Hong Kong and Taiwan independence. The Chinese also mocked Thailand as impoverished.Online commenters from Thailand quickly fought back. They cited the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre to challenge Beijing’s authoritarianism. One post said “my country is poor but your country is pooh.” It was referring to Winnie the Pooh, a character reference that has become a lighthearted way for people across the world to mock China’s President Xi Jinping.  The image remains banned in China.my country is poor but your country is pooh https://t.co/Q8KXdmAFk4pic.twitter.com/JTEnV3ZBQO— ทิฟไม่กินสับปะรด (@tiffanywilsonxo) April 11, 2020Netizens in Hong Kong and Taiwan soon joined the meme war, and the Milk Tea Alliance was born.A spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Thailand issued a statement, calling Beijing’s “One China Principle” toward Hong Kong and Taiwan “irrefutable” and saying “the recent online noises only reflect bias and ignorance.”Nathan Law, a former Hong Kong Legislative Council member, tweeted: “So funny watching the pro-CCP online army trying to attack Bright.” He added that the nationalists were attacking the wrong target, since “Bright’s fans are young and progressive.”So funny watching the pro-CCP online army trying to attack Bright. They think every Thai person must be like them, who love Emperor Xi. What they don’t understand is that Bright’s fans are young and progressive, and the pro-CCP army always make the wrong attacks.#nnevvypic.twitter.com/WSJv2c5uXB— Nathan Law 羅冠聰 😷 (@nathanlawkc) April 12, 2020Jason Y. Ng, a lawyer and a freelance writer based in Hong Kong, is a member of the Milk Tea Alliance. His Twitter posts are often the targets of Chinese nationalists because of his pro-democracy stance.”Thai netizens adopt a unique self-mocking style to counter attacks on my Twitter posts. Now these Chinese nationalists have given up commenting on my posts.” He told VOA, “The Alliance acts like some kind of pesticide or disinfectant—it’s fascinating!”The Alliance also criticizes the Chinese government’s aggressive action in the South China Sea.Thitinan Pongsudhirak, an international relations professor with Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, told VOA that the pan-Asia network reflects the difference between official opinion and public opinion in these countries when it comes to China.“There is divergent posture between Southeast Asian governments and their people,” he said. “Their governments actually are pro-China, such as the Philippines and Thailand.”A Thai government spokeswoman said the government respected Thais’ freedom of expression and the issue did not affect the nation’s ties with China.Danny Marks, an assistant professor with the City University of Hong Kong, told VOA that the online discussion has evolved into a wider political protest, because the people from these countries are increasingly dissatisfied with China’s unilateral actions in the area.“It also shows the limited ability of Chinese to wage internet warfare,” he said. “They had previously been pampered by the one-sided Chinese internet.”Andrew Selepak, a media expert with University of Florida, said that by binding together, these voices could become a significant counter to China’s strong cyber army.“It’s interesting to see that countries that don’t have the same political clout around the world and economic clout around the world individually, you are trying to act as a collective, as a counterbalance, to the influence of China on social media,” he told VOA.“China has been stepping up its influence in Asia. The threat is now on our doorstep. Therefore, I hope all Asian societies can build pan-Asian solidarity to fend off all forms of authoritarianism from China,” wrote Hong Kong pro-democracy leader Joshua Wong.[The statement by Chinese Embassy Bangkok is sheer arrogance and ignorance.] 1/ It is indisputable that the #nnevvy saga was provoked by the Chinese nationalist trolls, by firstly doxing, insulting and demeaning the Thai celebrities and people in Thailand. pic.twitter.com/EvzjQz6sqZ— Joshua Wong 黃之鋒 😷 (@joshuawongcf) April 15, 2020 
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Mandopop superstar Jay Chou is bringing a little magic into viewers’ lives with his Netflix show “J-Style Trip.”  
Part travelogue, part magic performance, the show has Chou diving into adventures around the world with his A-lister friends.  
“Magic is actually like music. It is a universal language,” Chou told The Associated Press in Taiwan recently.  
Chou and his friends take their magic tricks everywhere – from Pompidou in Paris to a local food court in Singapore – taking homebound viewers on virtual trips amid pandemic shutdowns.
 
“I wanted to show the warmness and friendliness of people around the world, and how people connect with each other in different ways,” Chou said.  
Each episode features a special guest like Taiwanese singer Jam Hsiao, Singaporean singer Wayne Lim Junjie, better known as JJ Lin, and classical pianist Lang Lang.  
Chou’s especially excited about Lang Lang’s upcoming appearance. “Lang Lang, in fact, is a very humorous and really fun person,” Chou said of the classical superstar who has a whopping 15 million followers on his social media.  
He couldn’t resist giving a sneak peek, revealing that Lang Lang will show up in hip-hop attire and fake mustache to surprise people.
 
Meanwhile, the singer-songwriter has another surprise in stored for his fans.  
“I haven’t released any albums for a very long time. That’s because I have been spending more time with my family,” said Chou, who got married in 2015 and has two children.  
Chou recently updated his Instagram with a picture of a piano painting by German artist Albert Oehlen.  
“I’ve started producing,” the caption said, with a piano emoji. Chou confirmed that he’s working on new songs. “I know my fans are excited. Seems like everyone’s been waiting for a long time,” Chou said.  
“Many people think my past songs are great and can’t be surpassed,” Chou said. He thinks his songs, albeit similar in some ways, cannot be compared because people project their own “memories” to each track.  
With more than 10 albums, Chou, who describes himself as “workaholic,” is still leveling up.  
“I always feel like only I can outperform myself!” 
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An Australian government inquiry into child sexual abuse committed by Catholic priests has concluded that Cardinal George Pell had been aware of the allegations for decades.The royal commission released its findings about Pell’s knowledge Thursday, nearly a month after Australia’s High Court overturned his 2018 conviction of child sexual abuse. The full inquiry had been released a year earlier, but its findings about the former  Vatican treasurer and close adviser to Pope Francis had been withheld to prevent jurors in his trials from being improperly influenced.The report said Pell knew about allegations involving ex-priest Gerald Risdale as far back as the 1970s when he was a priest in his hometown of Ballarat.  Pell told investigators that he was not aware of the allegations until 1993, but the commission said he discussed moving Risdale from a local parish to Sydney in 1982 when he was serving as an adviser to then-Ballarat Bishop Ronald Mulkearns.The inquiry also says Pell was aware of numerous disturbing allegations involving Melbourne parish priest Peter Searson when Pell was Melbourne auxiliary bishop in the late 1980s. Searson had numerous complaints lodged against him, including child sexual abuse and incidents of strange and violent behavior.Risdale is currently serving a lengthy prison sentence for abusing over 60 children over decades. Searson was convicted of physically assaulting an altar boy in 1997 but died in 2009 without being charged with child sexual abuse.The 78-year-old Pell was convicted by a court in Victoria state of molesting two teenage choirboys at Melbourne’s St. Patrick Cathedral in 1996 while serving as the city’s archbishop. He was sentenced the next year to six years in prison, making him the highest-ranking Catholic clergy member to be convicted in connection with the church’s decades-long scandal. 
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China’s recent sentencing of a blogger and its arrest of a veteran rights activist indicate that Beijing is determined to continue silencing any critics of the ruling party and government.Liu Yanli, a blogger in China’s Hubei Province, was sentenced April 22 to four years in prison by the local court for crimes of provocation. The court document said she was guilty of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble,” and that her online speech about current and former party leaders had damaged the government’s image.A week later, police took activist Xie Wenfei into custody for “provoking trouble.” Xie, who has long been part of China’s pro-democracy movement, has criticized the disappearance of several citizen journalists and rights activists who were involved in posting information about the government’s handling of the COVID-19 outbreak.Blogger Liu YanliThe verdict by the local court stated that Liu Yanli fabricated false information on messenger apps to attack the Communist Party of China and state leaders, and that her behavior constituted a crime of provocation.Blogger Liu Yanli’s verdict on April 24th. She was sentenced to four years in prison for insulting current and former leaders online. (Screenshot of Rights Protection Network’s Twitter post)Liu had been active on Chinese social media accounts since 2009, commenting on democracy and politics. She circulated articles on WeChat about Chinese President Xi Jinping, former premier Zhou Enlai and Chairman Mao Zedong. She also maintained a blog which was often critical of the government and the police. Police repeatedly harassed her over her postings.Liu’s defense lawyer, who is also a relative, said her treatment resembles detention practices from the Cultural Revolution, because the charges all related to her statements online, which should be protected as free speech by China’s Constitution.Article 35 of the Constitution proclaims, “Citizens of the People’s Republic of China enjoy freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of procession, and of demonstration.” However, the Constitution carries little weight in China’s courts, where judges often rule in line with the Communist Party’s preferences.”We were not allowed to visit her since the lockdown in January,” her sister Liu Yuehua told VOA. “I believe in her innocence. As long as she’s not tortured until she’s crazy, we will continue to appeal.”Liu made her last public appearance in court on Jan. 30, 2019. In her final statement, she said that this was not a legal case, but a political one.”I’m just an ordinary citizen, I’m not a party member. I use common sense to express my opinions, but now I’m facing a guilty verdict, I don’t think this is in line with the party’s slogan ‘serve the people,'” she said.She also mentioned the Cultural Revolution, the decade in China when education ground to a halt, and society was overtaken by outbreaks of violence and political persecution.”During the Cultural Revolution, if you want to make someone suffer, you just have to say he/she is anti-Party, and you are all set,” she said.Liu’s defense lawyer Wu Kuiming told VOA that the 29 charges listed in the indictment were all related to online remarks, pointing out that the case was similar to that of Lin Zhao and Zhang Zhixin, who were shot during the Cultural Revolution because of their “counter-revolutionary” remarks.Veteran activist Xie WenfeiMeanwhile, police detained activist Xie Wenfei on April 29 on suspicion of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble.”This detention notice dated April 30 shows that Xie Wenfei, a prominent activist, was detained for “provoking trouble.” Xie has been critical of how China is stifling reporting on coronavirus. (Screenshot of Rights Protection Network’s Twitter post)Xie is a veteran rights activist in China’s Hunan province. He recently has criticized the detention of three young volunteers who archived censored information about COVID-19 online, and questioned the disappearance in Wuhan of citizen journalists Chen Qiushi and Fang Bing. He also signed an online petition to honor the COVID-19 whistleblower Dr. Li Wenliang.Virus Storytellers Challenge China’s Official NarrativeCitizen journalists with smart phones and social media accounts are telling stories about the virus outbreak in China in their own words”This is not the first arrest,” his brother Xie Qiufeng told VOA. “The police didn’t tell me anything specific. I think it’s about what he had posted on WeChat again.”Born in 1977, Xie Yunfei is a veteran activist who has been detained many times for exercising his rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly over the years. He previously served a 4.5-year prison sentence for supporting the 2014 Occupy Central protests in Hong Kong.Xie’s friend Ou Biaofeng, who is also an activist, told VOA that he’s not surprised about Xie’s arrest.Ou said that in recent years, the government has severely reduced the space for civil liberties by rounding up rights lawyers, labor activists and citizen journalists. He added that anyone who expresses a slightly different opinion online will have their account blocked immediately.”The pro-democracy movement in China has entered a freezing winter because of the crackdown,” he said. “The pressure is just enormous. Also, for the past year or two, there’s been less and less support of civil movements. It’s quite sad.”The press freedom group Reporters Without Borders ranked China near the bottom of its 2020 press freedom index. The group said President Xi is tightening control over news and information and trying to export the country’s oppressive surveillance systems.  
 
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Philippine church and business leaders expressed alarm Wednesday over a government agency’s shutdown of the country’s largest TV and radio network, which has been a major provider of news on the coronavirus pandemic.
International watchdogs condemned the closure of ABS-CBN Corp., which President Rodrigo Duterte has targeted in the past for its critical coverage, as a major blow to press freedom in an Asian bastion of democracy.
The National Telecommunications Commission ordered the media giant to stop operating after its 25-year congressional franchise ended Monday. It reversed a statement to Congress that it would issue a temporary permit while legislators assess a franchise renewal. Only the House of Representatives can grant or revoke such franchise and its hearings have been delayed, in part by a coronavirus lockdown.
In a reflection of the extent of unease over the shutdown of the network, which went off air Tuesday night, both the opposition and key Duterte allies questioned the commission’s action.
Vice President Leni Robredo, who leads the opposition, said the timely dissemination of accurate information saves lives in a crisis and galvanizes national unity.
“Closing down ABS-CBN costs lives, on top of unnecessarily burdening the thousands who will lose their jobs,” she said.
Rep. Franz Alvarez, who belongs to a pro-Duterte coalition and heads the House Committee on Legislative Franchises, said the telecommunications commission’s order “is a clear encroachment on the jurisdiction of the House.”
Alvarez told ABS-CBN’s DZMM radio station that commission officials told lawmakers in a hearing in March that they would issue a temporary operating permit to ABS-CBN while its franchise renewal was pending based on guidance from the Department of Justice.
“We’re really surprised why they backtracked so they have to explain,” Alvarez told DZMM before it too went off air late Tuesday.
The Makati Business Club, a prestigious group of top business executives, said the network’s closure was a setback to national unity amid the unprecedented crisis.
Amnesty International in the Philippines said the closure order was an “outrageous attack” on media freedom and asked the government to immediately to bring the network back on air.
Bishop Gerardo Alminaza of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines protested the closure “on behalf of journalists and thousands of workers affected by the decision” as they struggled to cope with the contagion.
ABS-CBN has more than 11,000 news and production personnel nationwide. Aside from reporting on the coronavirus, which has infected nearly 10,000 people and killed 637 in the Philippines, it has also provided truckloads of food and medical aid.
Media watchdogs accused Duterte and his government of muzzling independent media like ABS-CBN that have reported critically on issues including the president’s anti-drug crackdown, in which thousands of mostly poor drug suspects have been killed. Government officials denied the closure was a press freedom issue, insisting that everyone must comply with the law.
Presidential spokesman Harry Roque said Tuesday that ABS-CBN was free to seek legal solutions and added that Duterte has left its fate to Congress.
But ahead of the franchise expiration, Solicitor-General Jose Calida asked the Supreme Court in February to revoke the operating franchises of ABS-CBN and a subsidiary in a separate attempt to shut down the company for allegedly abusing its franchises and violating a constitutional prohibition on foreign investment in Philippine media. ABS-CBN denied the allegations.
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Few images conjure the 1930s Depression like people standing in soup lines while farmers dump food they can’t sell. That is a tragedy Southeast Asia is fighting to avoid, though it is starting to happen in pockets around the world in the midst of COVID-19. Supply chain disruptions, driven by the pandemic, meant that melons were being discarded in Malaysia and rice was left idling at the ports in Vietnam last month. Fears of protectionism prompted governments in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations to step in, calling a meeting where they vowed not to restrict food exports. The intervention is important for the rest of the world, too, which relies on ASEAN as a top supplier of certain rice, seafood, and produce.  “We note that the COVID-19 outbreak has drawn our attention on the immediate danger of food shortage and its adverse effect on nutrition, given a sudden spike in demand and disruption in supply chains,” the agriculture ministers of the 10 ASEAN members said in a statement. They pledged to “refrain from imposing new export control, restrictions and prohibitions, tariffs and non-tariff barriers.” Now they plan to conduct a joint study on how to ensure food security, with periodic reviews of the status of each member and a focus on securing rice, corn, and sugar.  Self-fulfilling prophecy The challenge presents ASEAN with a classic economic quandary, whereby fear becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy if states don’t agree on collective action. Fears of food shortage can drive people to hoard, which in turn creates a food shortage.  Panic buying is only one of multiple factors behind COVID-19’s stress on the supply chain. First, consumers worldwide rushed to buy staples, as the virus forced many to stay home for weeks or months. Second, states became concerned this could decrease their domestic supply, so they issued export controls. That includes the suspension of egg exports from Thailand starting in March and rice exports from Vietnam and Myanmar. Third, these controls prompted concerns that states would retaliate with more controls. “The beggar-thy-neighbor approach to closing your exports means that others will close off their exports to you,” said Ashok Kumar Mirpuri, Singapore’s Ambassador to the United States, in a forum hosted by the Asia Society in April. However, after the ASEAN meeting, food fears have eased. Vietnam and Myanmar lifted rice restrictions in May, while Malaysia and Singapore struck a deal to fix the bottleneck at their border, which is what had caused the unsold melons to spoil.  A fourth factor in the supply chain disruption is an accident: To curb COVID-19, governments banned people from traveling across borders, but that also made it harder for people to transport food. This was the case for Malaysia, which did not ban melon exports but restricted people’s movements, which had a knock-on effect for food shipments. The restrictions also make it hard for farms to get the workers and feed supply they need.  And finally, a fifth factor is simply that the pandemic exposed a disconnect between supply and demand. For instance U.S. farmers have dumped their supply of potatoes and milk because COVID-19 dried up demand from usual customers like restaurants. There is still demand from supermarkets, but that requires different packaging, so farms not set up to meet those requirements had to let their food spoil. Zero-cost grocer ASEAN leaders think they have avoided that last risk for now, but remain concerned that some will go hungry. Some states have gotten involved in food distribution, such as at quarantine centers in Vietnam and at workers’ dorms in Singapore. Companies donating food include Dole, which gave out fruit, food packs, and juice in Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. “Recovery is possible only when everyone in the community is healthy,” Aashim Malhotra, Asia Pacific vice president at Dole Packaged Foods, said.  Vietnam has experimented with other ideas, such as a “rice ATM,” a machine that dispenses free rice, and a “zero cost” grocery store, which lets the needy take five free items per person, such as noodles or bananas. Former Vietnamese diplomat Ton Nu Thi Ninh said she hopes these ideas will continue after the crisis. “The COVID-19 global pandemic is laying bare much of what is wrong with our societies,” Ninh, now president of the Ho Chi Minh City Peace and Development Foundation, said. “At the same time it is activating inherent goodness in many of us, stimulating relief and philanthropic initiatives.” 
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The first thing Daniel Hsu noticed about the room was that there were no sharp edges. The walls were covered with beige rubber, the table wrapped in soft, grey leather. White blinds covered two barred windows. Five surveillance cameras recorded his movements, and two guards kept constant, silent watch. They followed Hsu to the shower and stood beside him at the toilet.  Lights blazed through the night. If he rolled over on his mattress, guards woke him and made him turn his face toward a surveillance camera that recorded him as he slept. He listened for sounds of other prisoners — a door slamming, a human voice. But he heard only the occasional roar of a passing train. “First, keep healthy,” Hsu told himself. “Second, keep strong.” He had no idea when or how he would get out. Hsu is a U.S. citizen. He has not been convicted of any crime in China, yet he was detained there for six months in solitary confinement under conditions that could qualify as torture under international conventions. Authorities from eastern Anhui province placed exit bans on Hsu and his wife, Jodie Chen, blocking them from returning home to suburban Seattle in August 2017 and effectively orphaning their 16-year-old daughter in America. Critics say the Chinese Communist Party’s expanding use of exit bans to block people — including U.S., Australian and Canadian citizens and permanent residents — from leaving China reeks of hostage-taking and collective punishment. They also warn that it lays bare China’s will to exert influence, not just over Chinese citizens in China, but also permanent residents and citizens of other countries.  “American citizens are too often being detained as de facto hostages in business disputes or to coerce family members to return to China — this is shocking and unacceptable behavior by the Chinese government and a clear violation of international law,” said James P. McGovern, chair of the bipartisan Congressional-Executive Commission on China.  Hsu says Anhui authorities have been effectively holding them hostage in order to convince his father, Xu Weiming, to come back from the U.S. and face charges he embezzled 447,874 yuan (worth $63,000 today) over 20 years ago —  an allegation Xu denies. The COVID-19 pandemic has added grave new urgency to their desire to leave. Despite fear of retribution, the family is speaking out for the first time, offering a rare account of life inside China’s opaque system of exit bans and secretive detention centers.  Their story is supported by Chinese court documents and correspondence and interviews with U.S. and Chinese government officials. Some details could not be independently verified but are in line with accounts from other detainees. ‘Why are you not here?’ Five days before Hsu entered the smooth beige room at a Communist Party-run “education center” in Hefei, the capital of Anhui province, his stepdaughter, Mandy Luo, boarded a flight from Shanghai to Seattle alone. She had been on a family visit to China and was supposed to return with her mother to finish high school. But airport security had blocked her mother from boarding. Mandy vomited for 10 hours on the flight home. When Luo felt bad, she liked to curl up on her mother’s lap. But now it was just her, a barf bag and a snoring man next to her.  “Mom,” she kept thinking, “why are you not here?” The answer to that question lies in Chinese laws that give authorities broad discretion to block both Chinese citizens and foreign nationals from leaving the country. Minor children, a pregnant woman and a pastor — all with foreign passports — have been exit banned, according to people with direct knowledge of the cases.  The U.S., Canada and Australia have issued advisories warning their citizens that they can be prevented from leaving China over disputes they may not be directly involved in. People may not realize they can’t leave until they try to depart. “U.S. diplomats frequently raise the issue of exit bans and the need for transparency with the PRC government,” a State Department spokesperson said in an email. “The Department has raised Mr. Hsu’s case at the highest levels and will continue to do so until he is allowed to return home to the U.S.” “The misuse of exit bans is troubling,” said a spokesman for Canada’s Foreign Minister. “Promoting and protecting human rights is an integral part of Canada’s foreign policy.” Australian consular cables obtained by the AP through a freedom of information request show that diplomats have repeatedly flagged concerns to Chinese counterparts about the growing number of exit bans on Australians.  Within China, exit bans have been celebrated as part of a best-practices toolkit for convincing corrupt officials to return to the motherland for prosecution, part of President Xi Jinping’s sweeping campaign to purify the ruling Communist Party and shore up its moral authority. Many corruption suspects fled to the U.S., Australia and Canada, which do not have extradition treaties with China. Requests for comment to Anhui Province’s Commission for Discipline Inspection and Supervision, Public Security Department and procuratorate, as well as the province’s foreign affairs and propaganda offices all went unanswered. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Beijing declined to comment. I don’t have a Ferrari  Hsu was accused of being a co-conspirator in the corruption case against his father, Xu. The Hefei Intermediate People’s Court found that Xu embezzled money for real estate in the 1990s, while serving as chairman of Shanghai Anhui Yu’an Industrial Corporation, a developer owned by the Anhui Provincial People’s Government. At the time, Hsu was half a world away, studying accounting at the University of San Francisco. Xu denies the charges. In a letter to the court, he wrote that the money was a housing stipend, vetted by a government audit committee and awarded to dozens of employees. He said he is the target of a political vendetta. If he had really been interested in corruption, Xu added, he would have stolen far more than $63,000.  “If my dad’s rich, OK, I deserve this maybe,” said Hsu, who ran a barbecue restaurant in Bellevue, Washington, which he was forced to sell during his involuntary exile. “But I never enjoy anything. I don’t have a Ferrari. I don’t have a yacht. I’m just a small business owner. I work by my hands, cutting meat.” His interrogations came in fits and starts. He gazed at the smooth edges in his room and thought about hurting himself. He fantasized a Delta Force chopper would rescue him. The men would break through the walls and say, “You’re free, sir. Come with us.” No one came. He read sports magazines and the Bible. “Try to sit in a room for three hours and tell me how do you feel, just by yourself. You have nothing,” he said in an interview.  Before coming to the party education center, Hsu had spent 14 days in detention in Hefei, sharing a cell and one bucket toilet with two dozen men. Hsu asked police to send him back. At least there were other people, TV, chess. Even his cellmate who allegedly murdered his girlfriend was kind of nice. In mid-September police gave Hsu a phone so he could convince his parents to return. His mother told him they’d written letters to Washington. Surely, there would be justice. “Be strong,” she said. “I am proud of you.” Hsu’s mother told him he was living in the dark. No, he argued, there is a window in my room: “I can sometimes see the sun and the moon.” Now, he said, he knows what she meant. “I knew nothing else, nothing that happens in the world, they closed everything,” he said. “She told me, ‘In your heart there should be a light. You should keep that light on.'” After a few days, the phone was taken away. Hsu had been given a mission – convince his father to return – and he’d failed. Hsu was being held under “residential surveillance in a designated location,” a legal mechanism that allows detentions of up to six months without formal charges or judicial review in certain cases. The United Nations has urged Beijing to halt the practice, saying it “may amount to incommunicado detention in secret places, putting detainees at a high risk of torture or ill-treatment.” China is a signatory to the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, which defines torture as an intentional abuse of power by the state that causes severe physical or mental suffering. It signed, but did not ratify, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which precludes torture as well as “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.” Joshua Rosenzweig, a deputy regional director at Amnesty International in Hong Kong, said that though residential surveillance sounds better than throwing someone in jail, in practice it’s one of the most excruciating forms of detention under Chinese law. In Hsu’s case, he said prolonged solitary confinement and 24-hour surveillance seemed designed to cause psychological suffering with the aim of coercing him to do something. “That would clearly satisfy the criteria for torture and other ill treatment,” Rosenzweig said. “The ability, inside a black box, to carry out this kind of coercion against someone — it’s incredible this is allowed to go on.” Surviving solitude Hsu set a new challenge for himself: He would convince his guards, who had been ordered not to speak to him, to tell him their names. “You study me. I study you back,” he said. “Who is stronger.” Over time, and late at night, his guards relaxed. Hsu discovered one was a fan of Manchester United. Others wanted to know what the schools were like in America and how much real estate cost. Eventually, he said, he got one guy to bring him a caramel macchiato from Starbucks.  In December, police announced Hsu’s father had agreed to go back to China. Hsu was shocked. On Dec. 14, a consular officer came with news that his father had made a sworn statement declaring Hsu’s innocence.  His mother also sent word that her husband’s health was poor and he would postpone his return. Hsu held his fists and began to shake.  The next morning, his minders yelled at him. They made him make a videotaped message. Hsu told his parents they should have kept their word and returned. He wrote a letter, telling them he was getting sick in his head, pulling his hair out, not sleeping. The new rotation of guards refused to speak to him. He dreamed about his daughter and woke in the night, his face wet with tears. Jodie Chen, right, and her daughter, Mandy Luo, pose for a portrait in their home in Issaquah, Wash., April 13, 2020.Back in Seattle, Mandy was also struggling with solitude. Her mother’s presence had been like the air she breathed, invisible until it was gone. She missed the security of knowing someone was in the next room, just in case. She expanded her cooking repertoire beyond boiled eggs. She managed the garden, got the boiler fixed, put up her Christmas tree by herself and waded through college financial aid forms on her own, all while pulling straight A’s and helping her grandmother fire off petitions to Washington. “What I need to do gives me a lot of pressure,” she said. “I have to be a mom and then be a student at the same time.”  She didn’t want to add to the general misery, so she boxed up the rage and helplessness. Instead of shouting at her relatives, she wept in her family’s big, empty house. “Why me?” she cried out, to no one in particular. “I’m only 16. What are you expecting of me?” Who gets saved On Feb. 11, 2018, near the end of Hsu’s sixth month in detention, he was released. His wife drove nine hours to pick him up. They tossed his prison books in a dumpster and went out to dinner.  Hsu watched his wife eat. He couldn’t bring himself to hug her.  He was so sorry.  Maybe he had been alone too long.  After sleeping under blazing lights for six months, he could no longer sleep in the dark. Shanghai’s jostling crowds made him nervous. He kept crying. In Chinese tradition, he reasoned, nothing is more important than a son. The father should come back, even at pain of death, for his son. But what, then, of the son? Hsu said if his father returned to China and something bad happened, he would never forgive himself. Hsu’s mother, Qin Peiyun, insisted she and Hsu’s father would return to China only after Hsu and Chen, a U.S. green card holder, were safely back in Seattle.  “My husband and I go to China, we can’t save Daniel and Jodie,” Qin said in an interview. “If we go to China, they will destroy our whole family.” Hsu, 43, and Chen, 44, were living off savings. Their marriage was rapidly deteriorating. When they weren’t fighting, they sat at home and stared at each other.  They couldn’t say much on the phone because they figured their communications were monitored. It was a struggle to make their Americanized teenager understand how they could be stuck in China if they had done nothing wrong. Thousands of years ago, people who angered the Emperor risked having their entire family executed. But blood bonds and collective punishment were difficult for a person born in 2001 and living in Seattle to grasp.  Friends offered Hsu jobs or money to start a restaurant in Shanghai. But he always declined, worried he’d get them in trouble. He couldn’t work legally because he had a U.S. passport with an expired visa and the Anhui authorities wouldn’t give him paperwork needed to get a new one.  The U.S. Consulate in Shanghai lobbied intensively on their behalf. But nothing changed.  Hsu spent a lot of time at Starbucks. He realized that by sinking into the ruin of his life he was doing exactly what Anhui authorities wanted. The more miserable Hsu became, the more pressure it would put on his father to return. He decided to change things, starting with his marriage. “We have to show them no matter how hard the situation, we are fine, we are better somehow,” he told his wife. This might be their final chapter in China, so they should do their best to relish the country. Chen got a job. They went out with friends, ate crawfish and went to the beach at Sanya. In May 2019, immigration officers came to Hsu’s home and told him they were going to deport him because his visa had expired. They warned him he’d never be able to return to China.  “I said, ‘We can talk about that later, but deport me, please.'”  They didn’t. That same month a court notice went up outside their apartment saying the property would be auctioned. “We still need a happy life,” Hsu said. “We have to show people the positive side.” Tears were running down his face. A homecoming  In June 2019, Hsu and Chen missed their daughter’s high school graduation. In August, they recruited relatives to see her off to college. The days inched by. “Jail, I know my release date,” Hsu said. “I’m still in jail. The (expletive) China jail. And I don’t know my release date.” In early April, at the request of Anhui authorities, Chen wrote a formal petition for her exit ban to be lifted.  “I miss my daughter so much, especially at this critical moment,” she wrote. “I do hope to take care of her, side by side, to fulfill my duty as a mother.” She pledged to persuade her father-in-law to return to China, saying she would deepen her emotional bond with her in-laws to establish mutual trust, then explain the “tolerant and humanized approach” of Chinese justice. She would use her wisdom and emotional suasion to reassure them that “the party and government will be fair and impartial.”  It was unclear why Chen’s exit ban was lifted. Hsu would have to stay in China. “They told me if my dad is not coming back, I will never leave this country,” he said. Talking on FaceTime with her parents a week before her mother’s departure, Mandy, now 19, began to cry over a minor disagreement, then found she couldn’t stop. She cried so long and so deeply she could barely breathe, pouring out three years of stress and loneliness.  The morning of April 10, Chen and Hsu rode to Shanghai’s Pudong International Airport in a diplomatic sedan, a small American flag on the hood flapping in the wind. The Shanghai consul general, Sean Stein, escorted Chen to the departure gate. Chen’s trip back to Seattle took more than 24 hours. Concerned she might have picked up COVID-19 on the journey, she took an Uber from the airport to the leafy cul-de-sac they call home. Her daughter and her mother-in-law were waiting outside in the dark.  It had been 971 days since Chen had touched her daughter. “Finally, Mom’s back,” Chen said. Mandy ached to embrace her mother, but her grandmother had her by the arm, holding her back. No one knew what terrible germs Chen might be carrying. Chen had planned to self-quarantine for two weeks, but Mandy couldn’t wait. She moved from her grandparents’ house and went into quarantine with her mother. “It’s 50 percent over,” Mandy said. “My dad is the other 50 percent.” Back in Shanghai, Daniel went home from Pudong airport and slept most of the day.  When he awoke, he was alone.  
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