Hong Kong riot police armed with shields dispersed a crowd of 300 pro-democracy activists holding a singing protest in an upmarket shopping mall on Sunday, despite a ban on public gatherings of more than four people. Chanting popular protest slogans, mostly young activists clad in black swarmed the Cityplaza mall shouting “Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our times!” while others called for the release of pro-democracy activists. The protest was the first sizable gathering since the government imposed the ban on public meetings at the end of March to curb a spike in coronavirus infections. Fears that Beijing is flexing its muscles over the Asian financial hub risk reviving anti-government protests after months of calm as social distancing rules start to ease. Political tensions have escalated over the past two weeks after the arrest of 15 pro-democracy activists in the city’s biggest crackdown on the movement. Beijing has said it supported the arrests in the Chinese special administrative region. On Sunday, police cordoned off sections of the Cityplaza mall, prompting some stores to shut as activists and shoppers, including families with children, were ordered to leave. “People were just singing, it’s very peaceful … we didn’t do anything illegally. Democracy and freedom is more important,” said a high school student surnamed Or who came to participate ahead of his university entrance exam on Monday. Adding to concerns that Beijing is increasingly meddling in the city’s affairs — a claim the central government rejects — Beijing’s top official in there urged local authorities last week to enact national security legislation as soon as possible.  
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The part-owner of a Hong Kong bookstore specializing in texts critical of China’s leaders reopened his shop in Taiwan on Saturday after fleeing Hong Kong due to legal troubles, saying he was grateful for the chance to make China’s Communist rulers “less than happy.”The opening and accompanying news conference came days after Lam Wing-kee was splattered with red paint by a masked man while sitting alone at a coffee shop in Taiwan. Lam suffered no serious physical injuries and showed little sign of the attack other than a red tint to his hair.China’s leaders don’t want to allow a bookstore selling tomes that would “make them uncomfortable or impact on their political power,” Lam, who moved to Taiwan a year ago, told journalists.He thanked supporters in both Taiwan and Hong Kong, a semi-autonomous Chinese territory, for the opportunity to start over. “This makes (China’s leaders) less than happy,” said Lam, who raised nearly $200,000 through online fundraising to finance his new venture.Lam Wing-kee, one of five shareholders and staff at the Causeway Bay Book shop in Hong Kong, waves to the press at his new book shop on the opening day in Taipei, Taiwan, April 25, 2020.Commenting on Tuesday’s assault, Lam said the Communist Party appeared to think it could stifle the shop’s business in both Hong Kong and Taiwan by using “underhanded methods of all sorts.”However, on a slightly pessimistic note, he added that China’s policies had left little room for idealistic young Hong Kongers other than “into the big sea.”Lam was one of five shareholders and staff at the Causeway Bay Book shop in Hong Kong, which sold books and magazines purporting to reveal secrets about the inside lives of Chinese leaders and the scandals surrounding them.Along with others, he was taken across the border and put into Chinese custody in 2015 but was released on bail and allowed to return to Hong Kong in June 2016 in order to recover information about his customers stored on a computer.After refusing to return to China, he went public with accusations that he had been kidnapped and brought to the mainland, where he says he was interrogated under duress about his business. Following the detentions, the shop was forced to close, while edgy political texts have largely disappeared from mainstream book retailers under pressure from Beijing.Lam moved to Taiwan last year amid fears over proposed legislation that would have allowed suspects to be extradited to China, and likely face torture and unfair trials. Concerns over the legislation, which was later withdrawn, sparked months of sometimes-violent protests in Hong Kong, a former British colony that has retained its own legal, political and economic system after being handed over to the mainland in 1997.Hong Kong police last week arrested 15 prominent lawyers and opposition figures over their alleged involvement in the protests, prompting further concerns that the city’s civil liberties are being eroded by China’s increasingly stringent political controls.Although claimed by Beijing as its own territory, self-governing Taiwan, with its flourishing democracy and robust defense of civil rights, has become a safe haven for critics of the Chinese government.Two high school students who turned out for Saturday’s event at the minuscule shop on the 10th floor of a business building in Taipei’s Zhongshan District said they saw its reopening as a sign of both hope and defiance.”It offers Hong Kong people a safe place to develop,” said one of the students, Hsu Shih-hsun.Taiwan’s own experience with dictatorship and martial law under Nationalist Party leader Chiang Kai-shek, who fled to the island with his government ahead of the Communist takeover of the mainland in 1949, adds special resonance to the values the bookstore represents, said the other student, Wang Tsung-fan.”I think that this bookstore coming to Taiwan makes us Taiwanese extremely proud. We can give Hong Kong a helping hand,” Wang said. “After all, our own freedoms were not easily won.”  
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The COVID-19 pandemic has forced Australia and New Zealand to abandon almost all Anzac Day services Saturday. Lockdowns and social distancing regulations have forced many to mark the occasion, a day of remembrance of Australians and New Zealanders who have died in combat, with simple services at home.  
 
“This year we may not stand shoulder-to-shoulder but let us stand together in that spirit at dawn,” said a video by a veterans’ group to mark the occasion.
 
Under lockdown, many Australians and New Zealanders stood outside their homes to remember the Anzacs, and other servicemen and women.
 
Marches and parades that would usually attract large crowds were canceled because of the COVID-19 outbreak.A national service in Canberra was attended by a handful of political leaders and military veterans.  
 
Returned Service Nurse, Wing Commander Sharon Bown, spoke of her great-uncle, who landed at Gallipoli 105 years ago.
 
“In this time of crisis, let us realize the innate capacity within each of us to do the same.  To unite and protect the more vulnerable among us. To realize that the qualities for which we honor the Anzacs live on in each of us; endurance, courage, ingenuity, good humor, mateship and devotion to duty, to each other, to Australia — lest we forget,” Bown said.
 
In New Zealand, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern spoke of her hopes for the future.  
 
“We honor the Anzac commitment and we reflect on our enduring hopes for peace and a world that does not ask for the sacrifice of war, but instead asks for a commitment to empathy, kindness and to our shared humanity.  May we remember that as we stand together this Anzac Day,” Ardern said.
 
Anzac Day commemorates the disastrous landing by the Australia and New Zealand Army Corps at Gallipoli in Turkey on April 25, 1915. To many, the courage of those troops under devastating enemy fire helped to forge the identities of both former British colonies.
 
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U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told his Southeast Asian counterparts on Thursday that China is taking advantage of the world’s preoccupation with the coronavirus pandemic to push its territorial ambitions in the South China Sea.
 
Pompeo made the accusation in a meeting via video to discuss the outbreak with the foreign ministers of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
 
Beijing’s expansive territorial claims in the South China Sea conflict with those of ASEAN members Vietnam, Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Indonesia, and are contested by Washington, which has an active naval presence in the Pacific.
 
“Beijing has moved to take advantage of the distraction, from China’s new unilateral announcement of administrative districts over disputed islands and maritime areas in the South China Sea, its sinking of a Vietnamese fishing vessel earlier this month, and its ‘research stations’ on Fiery Cross Reef and Subi Reef,” Pompeo said.
 
He also accused China of deploying militarized ships to intimidate other claimant countries from developing offshore gas and oil projects.
 
Most other participants focused in their statements on health, economic and social problems resulting from COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus.
 
“The Foreign Ministers exchanged views on the COVID-19 situation in their respective countries, as well as information and best practices on dealing with the outbreak from a public health perspective,” Singapore said. “They noted the grave socio-economic impact of COVID-19, and emphasized the need for ASEAN and the U.S. to work closely together on a forward-looking approach to address post-pandemic economic recovery.”
 
Pompeo thanked Vietnam, Malaysia and Cambodia for their material aid in fighting the outbreak and noted U.S. financial assistance.
 
“To date, the United States has released more than $35.3 million in emergency health funding to help ASEAN countries fight the virus, building on the $3.5 billion in public health assistance provided across ASEAN over the last twenty years,” he said, announcing also a new project to promote ASEAN health security through research, public health and training.
 
Pompeo also called on China to close its wildlife markets. It is generally believed the coronavirus originated at one such “wet market” in Wuhan in China, though blame for the epidemic has become a hot debate between Beijing and Washington.
 
Pompeo said the U.S was also concerned by a recent scientific report “showing that Beijing’s upstream dam operations have unilaterally altered flows of the Mekong,” endangering the livelihoods of tens of millions of people living downstream in Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam.
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Asian markets were on the upswing Thursday as investors were encouraged by the steady recovery of the U.S. crude oil market after this week’s historic plunge.Japan’s benchmark Nikkei index gained nearly 300 points, or 1.5 percent, to close out Thursday’s session at 19,429.44.The indexes in Hong Kong and Seoul also were in positive territory in late morning trading, while Shanghai and Sydney were flat.In oil futures trading, the price of U.S. benchmark West Texas Intermediate crude oil was 6.2 percent higher at $14.64 per barrel, continuing its turnaround from Monday, when it fell to $-37.63 per barrel — the first time the price dropped below zero.Economic activity has ground to a halt worldwide amid the coronavirus pandemic, wiping out demand for gas and causing such a massive glut of oil that producers may have to pay their customers to take the excess supply off their hands.Brent crude oil, the international benchmark, also was back in positive territory, trading at $21.32 per barrel, up nearly 1 percent.        
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The United States is accusing China of taking advantage of the COVID-19 outbreak and increasing its military activities near Taiwan and in the South China Sea. “The United States strongly opposes China’s bullying,” U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Wednesday, ahead of a virtual meeting between the U.S. and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) foreign ministers later in the day. “We’ve also seen that the Chinese Communist Party is exerting military pressure on Taiwan and coercing its neighbors in the South China Sea, even going so far as to sink a Vietnamese fishing vessel.  We hope other nations will hold them to account,” added Pompeo during a press briefing, hours before his videoconference with ASEAN ministers. The U.S. and ASEAN had been eyeing a summit to boost ties, at a time when China continues to expand its influence in Southeast Asia. The dialogue was Chinese officials have said that an attempt of any form to “deny China’s sovereignty and interests in the South China Sea,” and “enforce illegal claims” will be invalid and “doomed to fail.” China is stepping up patrols in the disputed South China Sea, with multiple news reports saying the Chinese Haiyang Dizhi 8 fleet passed through disputed tracts of the South China Sea last week. Taiwan’s defense ministry says a Chinese aircraft carrier and five accompanying warships were spotted prowling the waters near Taiwan’s east coast and then into seas to the south of Taiwan around April 11 and 12, carrying out exercises. Analysts say China may be sending a deterrent message to the U.S. that its military is not weakened by the coronavirus outbreak. “China’s People’s Liberation Army is again quite active in the midst of this coronavirus, and it shows no signs of slowing down its operations,” said Drew Thompson, a former U.S. defense official and now a senior research fellow at National University of Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy. As nations continue to battle the spread of COVID-19, the United States is also renewing its criticism that China’s ruling Communist Party failed to report the outbreak in a timely manner to the World Health Organization (WHO). Citing the International Health Regulations (IHR) adopted by the WHO, Pompeo told reporters Wednesday that “the world set very clear expectations for how every country must disclose data to protect global health. For example, Article 6 of the IHR says that “each state party shall notify the World Health Organization within 24 hours of all events which may constitute a public health emergency of international concern within its territory.” China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology is believed to have completed the mapping of the coronavirus genome, but that data has not been made public by Chinese authorities. “We still do not have a sample of the virus, nor has the world had access to the facilities or other locations where this virus may have originated inside of Wuhan,” Pompeo said, urging China to allow U.S. scientists and medical professionals into the Wuhan Institute of Virology and other labs. China has rejected charges that it mishandled the outbreak, saying it has been transparent and open about the spread of the virus.
 
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As people across the globe stay home to stop the spread of the new coronavirus, the air has cleaned up, albeit temporarily. Smog stopped choking New Delhi, one of the most polluted cities in the world, and India’s getting views of sights not visible in decades. Nitrogen dioxide pollution in the northeastern  United States is down 30%. Rome air pollution levels from mid-March to mid-April were down 49% from a year ago. Stars seem more visible at night.
People are also noticing animals in places and at times they don’t usually. Coyotes have meandered along downtown Chicago’s Michigan Avenue and near San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge. A puma roamed  the streets of Santiago, Chile. Goats took over a town in Wales. In India, already daring wildlife has become bolder with hungry monkeys entering homes and opening refrigerators to look for food.
When people stay home, Earth becomes cleaner and wilder.
“It is giving us this quite extraordinary insight into just how much of a mess we humans are making of our beautiful planet,” says conservation scientist Stuart Pimm of Duke University. “This is giving us an opportunity to magically see how much better it can be.”  
Chris Field, director of the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, assembled scientists to assess the ecological changes happening with so much of humanity housebound. Scientists, stuck at home like the rest of us, say they are eager to explore unexpected changes in weeds, insects, weather patterns, noise and light pollution. Italy’s government is working on an ocean expedition to explore sea changes from the lack of people.
“In many ways we kind of whacked the Earth system with a sledgehammer and now we see what Earth’s response is,” Field says.
Researchers are tracking dramatic drops in traditional air pollutants, such as nitrogen dioxide, smog and tiny particles. These types of pollution kill up to 7 million people a year worldwide, according to Health Effects Institute president Dan Greenbaum.  
The air from Boston to Washington is its cleanest since a NASA satellite started measuring nitrogen dioxide,in 2005, says NASA atmospheric scientist Barry Lefer. Largely caused by burning of fossil fuels, this pollution is short-lived, so the air gets cleaner quickly.
Compared to the previous five years, March air pollution is down 46% in Paris, 35% in Bengaluru, India, 38% in Sydney, 29% in Los Angeles, 26% in Rio de Janeiro and 9% in Durban, South Africa, NASA measurements show.
“We’re getting a glimpse of what might happen if we start switching to non-polluting cars,” Lefer says.
Cleaner air has been most noticeable in India and China. On April 3, residents of Jalandhar, a city in north India’s Punjab, woke up to a view not seen for decades: snow-capped Himalayan peaks more than 100 miles away.
Cleaner air means stronger lungs for asthmatics, especially children, says Dr. Mary Prunicki, director of air pollution and health research at the Stanford University School of Medicine. And she notes early studies also link coronavirus severity to people with bad lungs and those in more polluted areas, though it’s too early to tell which factor is stronger.
The greenhouse gases that trap heat and cause climate change stay in the atmosphere for 100 years or more, so the pandemic shutdown is unlikely to affect global warming, says Breakthrough Institute climate scientist Zeke Hausfather. Carbon dioxide levels are still rising, but not as fast as last year.
Aerosol pollution, which doesn’t stay airborne long, is also dropping. But aerosols cool the planet so NASA climate scientist Gavin Schmidt is investigating whether their falling levels may be warming local temperatures for now.
Stanford’s Field says he’s most intrigued by increased urban sightings of coyotes, pumas and other wildlife that are becoming video social media staples. Boar-like javelinas congregated outside of a Arizona shopping center. Even New York City birds seem hungrier and bolder.
In Adelaide, Australia, police shared a video of a kangaroo hopping around a mostly empty downtown, and a pack of jackals occupied an urban park in Tel Aviv, Israel.
We’re not being invaded. The wildlife has always been there, but many animals are shy, Duke’s Pimm says. They come out when humans stay home.
For sea turtles across the globe, humans have made it difficult to nest on sandy beaches. The turtles need to be undisturbed and emerging hatchlings get confused by beachfront lights, says David Godfrey, executive director of the Sea Turtle Conservancy.
But with lights and people away, this year’s sea turtle nesting so far seems much better from India to Costa Rica to Florida, Godfrey says.
“There’s some silver lining for wildlife in what otherwise is a fairly catastrophic time for humans,” he says.
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China will pay close attention to clusters of coronavirus infections, especially in hospitals, according to a top level meeting chaired by Premier Li Keqiang on Wednesday.
 
China’s northeastern city of Harbin has had several clusters of infections in local hospitals.
 
The government also called for efforts to increase coronavirus testing capability and produce more effective testing equipment, according to a statement on the state council’s website.
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China’s Foreign Ministry Wednesday rejected a lawsuit filed by the U.S. state of Missouri claiming the nation is responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic.Missouri’s attorney general, Eric Schmitt, announced the lawsuit Tuesday, alleging Chinese officials are responsible for the pandemic that has sickened around 2.5 million people worldwide, thrown tens of millions out of work and devastated local economies, including in China.Schmitt said the Chinese government lied about the dangers of the virus and didn’t do enough to slow its spread.At a news briefing Wednesday in Beijing, China Foreign Ministry Spokesman Geng Shuang said the “so-called” lawsuit was “malicious” and “without factual or legal basis.”  He maintained that China has been transparent throughout the crisis and informed the World Health Organization (WHO) about the coronavirus situation in a timely fashion.  Shuang also said Chinese officials had been in regular contact with the U.S. government regarding the coronavirus since January 3.Missouri’s action is likely to be largely symbolic since lawsuits against other countries typically are dismissed because U.S. law generally prohibits them.
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In the more than four months since China reported an outbreak of viral pneumonia in Hubei province, the coronavirus has raced to nearly every corner of the world, but there are still no firm answers as to where it all began.China has said the first infected people caught the virus from live animals being sold in a wet market in Wuhan, Hubei’s main city. But since the first public reports of an unusual viral outbreak emerged last December, many observers have also noted that China’s first Level 4 bio-safety lab, which conducts research on animal coronaviruses, is located just a few kilometers from the wet market.The Wuhan Huanan Wholesale Seafood Market, where a number of people fell ill with a virus, sits closed in Wuhan, China, Jan. 21, 2020.Is it merely coincidence? Or did the lab play a more substantial role in the outbreak? Without firm evidence, speculation has filled the void. Here’s what we know.U.S. safety concernsNestled in the hilly outskirts of Wuhan, the high-security bio-safety laboratory is Asia’s first maximum security lab, housing more than 1,500 virus strains.It has also been a source of concern for U.S. officials dating back at least two years.Two State Department cables show that American embassy officials in Beijing made several visits to the research facility and sent two official warnings back to Washington in early 2018 about the lab’s inadequate safety measures. This was at a time when researchers were conducting risky studies on coronaviruses from bats, The Washington Post reported, citing intelligence sources.An aerial view shows the P4 laboratory at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan in China’s central Hubei province, April 17, 2020.Current and former U.S. intelligence officials in recent days also told different news outlets in the U.S. that the intelligence community is examining whether the coronavirus emerged accidentally from the lab and whether “patient zero” worked there.However, intel sources told VOA that the U.S. intelligence community “has not collectively agreed on any one theory” for the origin of the coronavirus.While the U.S. investigates, officials say the Chinese government’s continuing lack of transparency, including with respect to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, raises questions over how the outbreak began. Officials also accuse Beijing of still not sharing all of their data with the international community.Chinese safety concernsChina strongly rejects the possibility that the virus originated in the biosecurity lab instead of from animal-to-human transmission in Wuhan. However, authorities have offered little evidence to back up the claim.Instead, there is Chinese evidence that the lab had safety problems. VOA has located state media reports showing that there were security incidents flagged by national inspections as well as reported accidents that occurred when workers were trying to catch bats for study.This file photo taken on Feb. 23, 2017 shows workers next to a cage with mice (R) inside the P4 laboratory in Wuhan, capital of China’s Hubei province.About a year before the coronavirus outbreak, a security review conducted by a Chinese national team found the lab did not meet national standards in five categories.The document on the lab’s official website said after a rigorous and meticulous review, the team gave a high evaluation of the lab’s overall safety management. “At the same time, the review team also put forward further rectification opinions on the five non-conformities and two observations found during the review.”In addition to problems in the lab, state media also reported that national reviewers found scientists were sloppy when they were handling bats.One of the researchers working at the Wuhan Center for Disease Control & Prevention described to China’s state media that he was once attacked by bats and he ended up getting bat blood on his skin.In another incident the same researcher forgot to take protective measures, and the urine of a bat dripped “like rain onto the top of his head,” reported China’s Xinhua state news agency.In China, no single bio-safety enforcerChina’s government has long championed biotechnoloy, but more recently China’s top leader Xi Jinping has made lab safety a higher priority. Xi told a leadership meeting in Beijing last February that the country needed to accelerate the introduction of its first biosecurity law, outlining national policies for handling dangerous pathogens. A draft law was submitted to the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, the nation’s top legislative body, for review in October last year.Chinese President Xi Jinping learns about the hospital’s operations, treatment of patients, protection for medical workers and scientific research in Wuhan, the epicenter of the novel coronavirus outbreak, Hubei province, March 10, 2020.An independent American review of China’s bio-safety controls in 2016 found that the country had a “shortage of officials, experts, and scientists who specialize in laboratory biosafety.”Beth Willis, the former Chairwoman of Containment Laboratory Community Advisory Committee, a citizen Lab Advisory Committee based in Maryland, said the greatest danger to the public from labs housing dangerous pathogens are when lab workers unknowingly become infected and then go into the community.”This actually happened more than once from the USAMRIID (The United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases) labs at Fort Detrick, Maryland. While the worker became ill, or was hospitalized with a deadly pathogen, that pathogen was not infectious person to person, and an outbreak did not occur,” she said in an email to VOA.“Accidents happen on a regular basis. We have seen a few cases of high-profile labs in recent years where accidents happened or mistakes were made. For instance, in 2014 at the CDC (Centers for Disease Control) there were safety lapses involving Ebola virus, anthrax and bird flu, and there have been lapses at the NIH (National Institutes of Health) involving variola virus which causes smallpox,” said Dr Filippa Lentzos, a biosecurity expert at King’s College London.“These are just the tips of the iceberg.” Lentzos said.Chinese investigations into origin of COVID-19While Chinese diplomats and officials have floated a variety of conspiratorial theories about where the outbreak began, the country’s foreign ministry has insisted the search must be left up to the experts.Medical staff treat a critical patient infected by the COVID-19 with an Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) at the Red Cross hospital in Wuhan in China’s central Hubei province, March 1, 2020.”China has mentioned many times that the origin of the virus is a scientific question, which should be evaluated by scientists and medical experts, and should not to be politicized, “Geng Shuang, spokesperson for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, said at a routine press briefing on Monday.But Chinese officials themselves have produced little data for scientists to examine, and have kept the lab and critical parts of Wuhan virtually sealed off from foreign investigators.The People wearing face masks walk down a deserted street in Wuhan in central China’s Hubei Province, Jan. 28, 2020.”A major component of the novel-bat-virus project at Wuhan Institute of Virology involved infection of laboratory animals with novel bat viruses,” said Richard H. Ebright, a professor of chemical biology at Rutgers University.“Therefore, the possibility of a lab accident includes both: (1) scenarios with direct transmission of a bat virus to a lab worker, and (2) scenarios with transmission of a bat virus to a laboratory animal, such as a ferret, and then to a lab worker.”Bio-safety level 4 labs like the one in Wuhan are the most sophisticated containment labs that are designed to work with the world’s deadliest pathogens. However lab design cannot overcome poor training or human error.Chinese virologist Shi Zhengli (L) is seen inside the P4 laboratory in Wuhan, capital of China’s Hubei province, Feb. 23, 2017.This risk is increased if the laboratory is culturing a virus that is readily able to infect humans, particularly via the respiratory tract, as then any droplet caused by simple splash or aerosolization of liquid can be inhaled unknowingly and infect the operator,” said Dr. Nikolai Petrovsky, a professor at Flinders University and Research Director in Australia.”Similarly, if they are wearing gloves that are contaminated and don’t take them off properly this can cause accidental infection. Lastly, if waste material or animal carcasses that are infected are not properly incinerated at high temperature then this could cause contamination including, for example, if the waste is dumped on a garbage pile that is frequented by rats or cats etc.,” Petrovsky said in an email to VOA.Rutgers University Professor Ebright said in an email to VOA that lab’s previous safety violations indicate it is a possible infection source that should be taken seriously.”Documentary evidence indicates that the novel-bat-virus projects at Wuhan CDC and Wuhan Institute of Virology used PPE and bio-safety standards that would pose high risk of infection of lab staff upon contact with a virus having the transmission properties of the outbreak virus,” Ebright said.VOA’s correspondents Jeff Seldin and Nike Ching contributed to this story. 
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Lang Teng and his wife Him Chan Ouen have sold vegetables for more than four decades. They own two stalls totaling four meters square in the Boeng Keng Kong market, where shoppers can get a haircut or purchase housewares on the way to buying groceries for the day’s meals.  
 
Lang Teng opened his business in Phnom Penh not long after the murderous Khmer Rouge rule ended in 1979.
 
Today he remembers how shoppers arrived at the market back then, each with an empty basket. They moved from stall to stall, buying basics—vegetables, meat, fish, eggs—and tucking purchases into the baskets that always seemed to have room for another item.Until the late 1990s, Lang Teng said vendors wrapped items in “leaves like banana leaves, [and] water hyacinth strings. Now, we don’t see that anymore.”
 
Today, people go to the market without baskets and return home with food wrapped in plastic carried in plastic bags. Even big blocks of ice are protected in plastic,  
a big change from the traditional way of tying up ice blocks with water hyacinth strings to carry them.
 
Cambodians of Lang Teng’s basket-carrying generation remember routinely living a life that produced little to no waste. With a per capita income of $103, they had little disposable income and weren’t big consumers. What they had, they used until it wore out, then repurposed whatever remained. Ahead of the trend, they lived a zero-waste life.  
 
The Zero Waste International Alliance defines it as “the conservation of all resources by means of responsible production, consumption, reuse, and recovery of products, packaging, and materials without burning and with no discharges to land, water, or air that threaten the environment or human health.”
 
People in Cambodia’s capital city of Phnom Penh produce about 3,000 metric tons of solid waste every day. Nearly 60 percent of municipal solid waste comes from households, followed by hotels and guesthouses (16.7%), restaurants (13.8%), markets (7.5%), to shops (5.4%) and offices (1.4%), according to a 2016-2018 A man rummages through trash at Dangkor Landfill, in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Dec. 31, 2019. (Tum Malis/VOA Khmer)Local authorities opened the Dangkor Landfill in 2009, predicting it would swallow waste without a hiccup for the next 25 years. Designed at 31 hectares, after just five years, the first phase, comprising 14 hectares, was full, according to a 2016 case study, Reforming Solid Waste Management in Phnom Penh.
“Since opening, the amount of waste entering the landfill has increased from approximately 800 tons per day in 2009, to 1,475 tons per day in 2014, with some forecasts estimating that this will increase to 2,200 tons per day by 2020,” said the case study published by The Asia Foundation.
In May, 2019, Keo Channarith, director of the Dangkor Dumpsite Management Committee, told the Phnom Penh Post the dump would be full by the end of 2020 or early 2021.  
 
“The expected lifetime of the Dangkor [Landfill] was much longer,” said Rajeev Kuman Singh, a police researcher at the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES) in Japan. He has consulted with the Cambodian government on waste management planning.
 
Rapid population growth, little organized recycling and growing prosperity were among the factors that lead to an exponential increase in the amount of waste that overwhelming the landfill, according to Singh. In 1979, Cambodia’s population was 6.77 million and in 2018, it was 16.2 million, according to the World Bank, which figured the per capita income was $1,510 in 2018.
 
In the Cambodian government’s Phnom Penh Waste Management Strategy and Action Plan 2018-2035, the focus is on waste management, which is the collection, transportation and disposal of waste. The 166-page document released in October 2018 discusses the importance of the “3Rs” (reduce, reuse, and recycle of waste) and the need to promote educate waste-producers on how to dispose of it properly.
 
Uncontrolled disposal is the “least favored option” and reducing waste, or minimization, is the “most favored option”.  
 
“This zero-waste concept is applicable in Asian countries including Cambodia, however, achieving zero waste for Asian countries is a long journey” said Rajeev.
 
A seller across from Lang Teng’s stall made an observation. Fifty-year-old pork seller Chrin Chhenglea, said to reduce plastic it has to start from buyers.  
 
“It’s possible when it starts from shoppers,” said Chhenglea. “Sellers like us don’t want to give out plastic bags; it has to start with shoppers. They should bring their own shopping bag.”Water gets delivered to shelter dwellers at Dangkor Landfill, in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Dec. 31, 2019. (Tum Malis/VOA Khmer)Chhenglea added it would be more effective if the campaign to reduce plastic use was promoted in markets like Beung Keng Kang because many Cambodian patronize them instead of the more expensive malls.
 
“I think if they talk more about it inside the wet market like this, we would be more informed,” Chhenglea said “everyone would be reminded to bring their own bags to shop.”
Activists and international NGOs say they are working to increase understanding of the 3Rs. Many are focused on reducing plastic waste.  At Sotheavy, founder of Think Plastic, a campaign that raises awareness about plastic usage and how to reduce it, thinks Cambodia may need to improve its basic waste management before embracing the notion of zero waste.“I would never plan to be that extreme. I never thought about it, I could never see myself going toward zero waste at all,” At Sotheavy said. “It is too extreme.”Although At Sotheavy supports the idea of zero waste, she asked, “How would we begin on step 10 when we’re only doing steps 1, 2 and 3? We just started to talk about waste management.”  
 
And that conversation is going on as Lang Teng says his customers rely “on us giving away plastic bags.”
 
Baskets, banana leaves, and water hyacinth strings and trunks may have suited Cambodians when Lang Teng began his business, but four decades later, plastic is so cheap and so convenient that millions of plastic bags are used each day Phnom Penh, according to a 2019 report by the United Nations Development Program. The city with its metropolitan area has a population of about 2.2 million.
 
As long as the country lacks a waste management infrastructure, the report says “effective recycling of plastic waste in Cambodia is nearly impossible.”
 
While Cambodia needs to set up its system of waste management and reduce waste, the processes must be well thought out, according to Nick Beresford, UNDP’s country director in Cambodia.
 
“We want to be able to do this transition without the burden falling on the poorest people,” he said. ““This is really at the heart of the issue that we are looking at with the government, because it’s no point to simply banning the use of plastic that we don’t have the particularly good alternatives,” said Beresford. 
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The coronavirus pandemic has forced Australia’s second-largest airline, Virgin Australia, into a voluntary administration agreement under which it will be run by an outside entity. The airline said Tuesday it had entered into an agreement with the global financial services company Deloitte after the Australian government rejected its request for a $887 billion loan.  Administration is the equivalent of provisions in U.S. bankruptcy laws that are used to restructure financially ailing companies. Vaughan Strawbridge, one of the airline’s new administrators, said in a statement that the intention was “undertake a process to restructure and refinance the business and bring it out of administration as soon as possible.”  Strawbridge says there are already several parties who have expressed interest in taking part in a restructuring plan.   Virgin Australia was already mired in over $3 billion in debt when the government shut down international flights in and out of the country to limit the spread of COVID-19, forcing Virgin to ground most of its fleet and the majority of its 10,000 employees. The airline’s possible collapse would have left rival Qantas Airways with a virtual monopoly in Australia. Virgin Australia’s major shareholders include British billionaire Richard Branson’s Virgin Group, which owns a 10 percent stake in the struggling airline.
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