Law enforcement authorities in Western Australian have said a new mobile interpreting app will help improve relations with Indigenous communities, especially in areas where English is not commonly spoken. The technology translates a few common police directions into local languages and has been devised with an Aboriginal interpreting service.  The so-called Yarning app allows Western Australian police officers to select from eight Aboriginal languages and play key messages relating to rights in custody and the COVID-19 pandemic. Indigenous leaders believe it will save lives by preventing the wrongful imprisonment of people who don’t understand the legal process. The technology will be available in communities where English is often the third or fourth most commonly used language.  Chris Dawson is the Western Australia police commissioner. He says the app will build trust with indigenous communities.  “What better way to communicate that in language in the sense that we can now offer additional information to overcome confusion or to overcome fear, doubt, whatever it might be. This app is a world first,” he said. Critics, though, say the app is too basic and ignores deeper problems of racism within Australia’s justice system. Aboriginal Australians are some of the most incarcerated people on Earth, according to a report commissioned by the government in Canberra in 2019. FILE – An Aboriginal dance troupe performs at Australia Day celebrations in Sydney, Australia, Jan. 26, 2020. Rap music has been employed as part of a new awareness campaign to educate Australia’s Indigenous about the coronavirus.Relations with the police have often been fraught. Western Australia has the country’s highest rate of indigenous youth detention. A criminology study by the University of Technology, Sydney, said that since 1991, the number of Indigenous inmates in Australia has more than doubled from 14% to 29% of the total prison population. More than 780 indigenous languages are identified by First Languages Australia, an organization dedicated to saving linguistic heritage. It says about 20 languages are used every day by fluent speakers. Australia’s original inhabitants make up about 3.3% of the Australian population, according to a 2016 Australian Census, but suffer high rates of poverty, ill-health and unemployment. 
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In June, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un ordered his country to prepare for both “dialogue and confrontation” with the United States. It didn’t take long for the U.S. and its ally South Korea to experience both sides of that directive. Two weeks ago, North Korea hinted it was open to more interaction with the outside world, this week it lashed out at Seoul and Washington for conducting annual joint military exercises — a lightning-quick about-face, even by the volatile standards of North Korea. On Wednesday, Kim Yong Chol, a senior North Korean general and politician, warned Washington and Seoul will face a “serious security crisis” because of their “wrong choice” in holding the drills. “They must be made to clearly understand how dearly they have to pay for answering our good faith with hostile acts after letting go the opportunity for improved inter-Korean relations,” said Kim, according to state media.  A day earlier, Kim Yo Jong, the influential sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, called the South Korean decision “perfidious,” saying the drills show the need for North Korea to advance its “powerful preemptive strike” capabilities.  In apparent protest of the drills, North Korea also refused to answer South Korea’s phone calls through a pair of recently reconnected inter-Korean hotlines on Tuesday and Wednesday.  Though North Korea blames Washington and Seoul for escalating tensions, the North’s strategy isn’t new. For years, Pyongyang has used both threats and the prospect of talks to pressure Washington and Seoul, analysts say. “[It’s] the old playbook,” said Rachel Minyoung Lee, a Seoul-based Korea specialist at the Stimson Center. “We’ve seen this type of behavior from North Korea too much.” Detente crumbling?  Some in Seoul were optimistic last month, when both Koreas announced that Kim Jong Un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in had recently exchanged letters.  It appeared to be the highest level inter-Korean dialogue in nearly two years, and many hoped it would serve as a precursor toward better U.S.-North Korea ties.  As a first step toward improving inter-Korean relations, both leaders decided to reconnect several hotlines that the North had severed a year earlier during a previous outburst.  But even then, there were signs that North Korea was hedging.  Though outward-facing North Korean state media hailed the hotline restoration as a “big stride” toward restoring mutual trust, the article was never published domestically, an indication the North was never wholly committed to the idea of engaging the South, Lee said.  “It was clearly watching South Korea’s handling of the scheduled joint drills,” she added.Members of South Korea and U.S. Special forces take part in a joint military exercise conducted by South Korean and U.S. special forces troops at Gunsan Air Force base in Gunsan, Aug. 11, 2021.Pressure point North Korea regularly warns the South against holding the annual drills and often uses the occasion as a pressure point on Seoul. This time around, the heat was especially intense for Moon, who has less than a year in office and wants to leave a legacy of inter-Korean cooperation. “I’m sure he doesn’t want to leave office with inter-Korean relations in this kind of state,” Lee said. “North Korea was one of his top priorities, as we all know.” But Moon must hold the drills to advance another of his key goals: the transfer of wartime operational control of the South Korean military from the U.S. to South Korea.  Under the current setup, the U.S. would control the South Korean military if war broke out. Moon has said he would like to change that arrangement by the time he leaves office. But the transfer is not supposed to take place unless numerous benchmarks are met, including South Korea’s performance during military exercises.  Scaled back drills The U.S. and South Korea have for years scaled back or canceled major military drills, first in an effort to preserve the chances for diplomacy and later because of the pandemic. This month’s exercises will involve fewer personnel than normal because of the coronavirus, according to several South Korean reports.  The current exercises are computer-based command post exercises, in which teams react to simulated incidents.  David Maxwell, a senior fellow who focuses on Korea at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, says such drills are crucial. “They are the Ph.D. level of defense training because they can provide the full range of complex scenarios,” Maxwell said.  Defensive drills But no matter their size or scope, North Korea views the drills as an act of aggression, Kim Yo Jong said in her statement this week.  In a regular briefing Tuesday, U.S. State Department spokesperson Ned Price pushed back on that assertion, saying the exercises are “purely defensive in nature.”  “We have made that point repeatedly, and it’s a very important one,” Price said.  “More broadly, and as we’ve said in recent weeks, we support inter-Korean dialogue. We support inter-Korean engagement, and we’ll continue to work with our (South Korean) partners towards that end,” he added. What’s next? Much depends on North Korea’s next move.  While Pyongyang has hinted at more tensions, its statements this week did not carry specific threats. Officials with South Korea’s spy agency recently told lawmakers in Seoul they expect North Korea could soon test a submarine-launched ballistic missile.  But Lee says the North may be more likely to start with a less risky provocation, such as dissolving North Korean government organizations that handle inter-Korean cooperation. At the beginning of 2020, Kim Jong Un warned he will no longer be bound by his self-imposed moratorium on long-range missile launches or nuclear tests.  But North Korea may be reluctant to take any step that risks bringing further economic and diplomatic isolation.  North Korea is already dealing with economic hardship caused by its severe coronavirus lockdown, as well as several natural disasters that have hurt its agriculture Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul, says those pressures may help explain North’s latest shift. “North Korea’s amped up rhetoric against scaled down U.S.-South Korea defense exercises appears to be more about domestic politics than signaling to Washington,” he said. “The Kim regime is shifting blame for its struggles to restart the economy after a long, self-imposed pandemic lockdown.” 
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In May 2021, China allowed its families to have up to three children, just five years after it had increased the limit to two. However, the changes are not likely be felt anytime soon because of the far-reaching impacts of China’s one-child policy, which lasted more than 35 years. Here is a look back at the controversial one-child policy and how its many ramifications are affecting the current state of families in China.
 
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The U.S. State Department announced Tuesday it was providing more than $50 million in humanitarian aid to Myanmar citizens who are coping with a humanitarian crisis sparked by a February 1 military coup.The coup in the Southeast Asian country, formerly known as Burma, has led to deadly anti-junta protests and clashes between several armed ethnic groups and the ruling junta. This has caused shortages of essential goods and services, and it has forced thousands to flee their homes.“This aid will enable our international and non-governmental organization partners to provide emergency food assistance, life-saving protection, shelter, essential health care, water, sanitation and hygiene services to the people of Burma, including those forced to flee violence and persecution,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said in a statement.“We have a severe COVID-19 third wave in Myanmar,” the U.N. special envoy on Myanmar, Christine Schraner Burgener, told reporters Tuesday in a video briefing. “Entire families are falling sick with COVID, with relatives desperately seeking and struggling to access treatment, oxygen and other supplies, while prices have skyrocketed.”She said there have been 330,127 confirmed cases of the infection, with 3,611 new cases recorded on Monday. The envoy said the cases are probably higher as testing is not being done across the country.  Separately, the special envoy said for the past two months, she has been discussing how to get an inclusive dialogue started among the military, the national unity government and ethnic armed groups, in an effort to resolve the political crisis.“The ethnic armed organizations were, in the majority, very positive on this idea and really want to find a peaceful solution,” she said. “The National Unity Government was interested in the idea, but clearly would have preconditions to start such a dialogue.”Schraner Burgener said she had a long conversation last month with the deputy commander in chief of the military but has not received any response regarding the possibility of a dialogue. The army is also not ready to allow her to visit the country, a request she has been making since the February coup.Schraner Burgener welcomed the long-awaited appointment of a special envoy for Myanmar from regional bloc ASEAN and said the person, Erywan Yusof, would have her full cooperation and support.Meanwhile, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, announced in the statement that the U.S. also was providing $5 million to help Thailand contain the spread of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.“Today’s announcement of additional COVID-19 assistance to Thailand will support health care workers administering vaccines and will strengthen the vaccine supply chain to help ensure that they reach the most vulnerable populations.”Demonstrators reportedly were protesting in the streets of Bangkok again Tuesday to denounce the government’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic. Police fired water cannons at protesters who increasingly are angry about Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha’s handling of the country’s most serious outbreak of infections and its adverse impact on the economy, according to Reuters.(Reuters provided some information for this report.) 
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A leading epidemiologist and an adviser to the World Health Organization is calling for a nighttime curfew and daily testing for workers to bring Sydney’s COVID-19 outbreak under control. With a lockdown not producing the desired results in Australia’s largest city, it’s time to implement even stricter restrictions. That’s the opinion of professor Mary-Louise McLaws, an epidemiologist from the University of New South Wales. She is also a member of a World Health Organization expert panel on COVID-19. The state government in New South Wales, of which Sydney is the capital city, has said that higher rates of vaccination, up to 80 percent of the population, are the key to the gradual easing of restrictions. But McLaws says the benefits of mass inoculations will take time to reduce the spread of the delta variant.  “We are not going to get out of this with the vaccine. We’re certainly going to prevent deaths and hospitalizations, and then eventually we will start seeing a wonderful public health impact on reduced spread. But we do need more testing at the worksite, daily testing. We need night curfews to stop people wanting to sneak out at night and go and visit friends or extended families,” McLaws said.State authorities in New South Wales concede they may be forced to abandon the policy of trying to eliminate the virus because the spread of infections in Sydney is proving hard to stop, despite Australia’s strictest lockdown. Instead of trying to crush the virus, officials say Australia might have to live with it and hope the population would be protected by mass vaccinations. Indeed, New South Wales set a new daily record Tuesday with 356 recently diagnosed COVID-19 infections. State Premier Gladys Berejiklian is pleading with residents, especially those in Sydney’s virus hot spots, to get vaccinated.COVID-19 lockdown restrictions affect vulnerable communities in southwest Sydney, Aug. 10, 2021.“Those that are unvaccinated of any age continue to be vulnerable, and with case numbers where they are, unfortunately if you live in those local government areas of concern there is a high chance now you could get the virus. Please protect yourself, your family, your loved ones, your community by getting vaccinated,” Berejiklian said.Australia’s inoculation rates are much lower than other countries. About 22 percent of eligible Australians older than 16 have been fully inoculated. There have been problems with supply, but, crucially, there have been widespread concerns in the country about possible side effects of the AstraZeneca vaccine.  A third vaccine, Moderna, has been approved by the Therapeutic Goods  Administration, Australia’s official medical regular.  One million doses are expected to arrive in September of the 10 million doses ordered. The AstraZeneca and Pfizer treatments were approved earlier this year. Australia has recorded 36,330 coronavirus cases and 936 deaths since the start of the pandemic, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Research Center.  The country’s virus strategy includes the closure of its international borders to most foreign travelers, strict lockdowns and mass testing. A lockdown that began last Thursday in Melbourne, Australia’s second biggest city, continues.  
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Giant pumps whir deep underground at a plant in Singapore that helps transform sewage into water so clean people can drink it while reducing ocean pollution. The tiny island nation has little in the way of natural water sources and has long had to rely principally on supplies from neighboring Malaysia. To boost self-sufficiency, the government has developed an advanced system for treating sewage involving a network of tunnels and high-tech plants. Recycled wastewater can now meet 40% of Singapore’s water demand, a figure that is expected to rise to 55% by 2060, according to the country’s water agency. While most is used for industrial purposes, some of it is added to drinking water supplies in reservoirs in the city-state of 5.7 million people. And the system helps reduce maritime pollution, as only a small amount of the treated water is discharged into the sea. This is a contrast to most other countries: 80% of the world’s wastewater flows back into the ecosystem without being treated or reused, according to United Nations estimates. “Singapore lacks natural resources, and it is limited in space, which is why we are always looking for ways to explore water sources and stretch our water supply,” Low Pei Chin, chief engineer of the Public Utilities Board’s water reclamation department, told AFP. One key strategy is to “collect every drop” and “reuse endlessly,” she added. This is in addition to the city-state’s other main approaches to securing water supplies: importing it, using reservoirs and desalinating seawater. At the heart of the recycling system is the high-tech Changi Water Reclamation Plant on the city’s eastern coast. Parts of the facility in land-scarce Singapore are underground, some as deep as 25 stories, and it is fed by wastewater that flows through a massive, 48-kilometer (30-mile) tunnel, linked to sewers. The site houses a maze of steel pipes, tubes, tanks, filtration systems and other machinery, and can treat up to 900 million liters (237 million U.S. gallons) of wastewater a day — enough to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool every 24 hours for a year. In one building, a network of ventilators has been installed to keep the air smelling fresh, although a putrid odor still hangs in the air. Sewage that arrives at the plant undergoes an initial filtering process before powerful pumps send it flowing to facilities above ground for further treatment. There, the treated water is further cleansed, with impurities like bacteria and viruses removed through advanced filtration processes and disinfected with ultraviolet rays. The end product, dubbed NEWater, is mainly used in microchip manufacturing plants, which are ubiquitous in the city-state and require high-quality water, and for cooling systems in buildings.  But it also helps boost drinking water supplies. During the dry season, it is sent to top up several man-made reservoirs and, following further treatment, flows to people’s taps. Singapore is expanding its recycling system.  It will add an extra underground tunnel and a major water reclamation plant to serve the western half of the island, which should be completed by 2025. Singapore will have spent Sg$10 billion (U.S. $7.4 billion) on upgrading its water treatment infrastructure by the time the expansion is finished.  One impetus to seek greater self-sufficiency are the city-state’s historically fractious relations with Malaysia, its key water source. The neighbors have had stormy ties since Malaysia ejected Singapore from a short-lived union in 1965, and they have in the past had disagreements over water supplies. Stefan Wuertz, a professor of environmental engineering at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University, stressed the importance for other countries to treat wastewater more effectively, warning of serious long-term impacts otherwise. “There is a limited amount of water on the planet,” he told AFP. “If we were to keep polluting the freshwater, at some stage we would reach the point where … treatment becomes extremely expensive.” 
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Mount Merapi, Indonesia’s most active volcano, erupted Monday, sending plumes of ash into the air and pyroclastic flows — a mixture of volcanic debris — down its slopes for a second straight day. Geologists in Indonesia say the 2,968-meter-high Merapi stratovolcano has seen increased volcanic activity in recent weeks, with a dome of solidified lava growing rapidly on its summit. They say the lava dome partially collapsed Sunday, sending at least seven pyroclastic flows, as much as 3 kilometers down the mountain’s sides. There were three such flows on Monday.Officials say ash from the eruption blanketed several villages and nearby towns, but no casualties were reported. Mount Merapi is located on Java, Indonesia’s most populous Island, and is located near Yogyakarta, an ancient city of about 400,000 people.Hanik Humaida, head of Yogyakarta’s Volcanology and Geological Hazard Mitigation Center, told the Associated Press the volcano has been at the orange alert level — the second highest alert status — since eruptions began last November. She said the current eruptions did not change the volcano’s status. However, villagers living on Merapi’s slopes were advised to stay 5 kilometers away from the crater’s mouth. Merapi’s last major eruption in 2010 killed 347 people and displaced 10,000, one of the deadliest volcanic eruptions in recent years.Some information in this report came from the Associated Press.  
 
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Nagasaki Monday marked the 76th anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombing of the Japanese city with its mayor urging Japan, the United States and Russia to do more to eliminate nuclear weapons.     In his speech at the Nagasaki Peace Park, Mayor Tomihisa Taue urged Japan’s government to take the lead in creating a nuclear-free zone in Northeast Asia rather than staying under the U.S. nuclear umbrella – a reference to the U.S. promise to use its own nuclear weapons to defend allies without them.     Taue also singled out the United States and Russia – which have the biggest arsenals by far – to do more for nuclear disarmament, as he raised concern that nuclear states have backtracked from disarmament efforts and are upgrading and miniaturizing nuclear weapons.      “Please look into building a nuclear-weapons-free zone in the Northeast Asia that would create a ‘non-nuclear umbrella’ instead of a ‘nuclear umbrella’ and be a step in the direction of a world free of nuclear weapons,” Taue said as he urged Japan’s government to do more to take action for nuclear disarmament. At 11:02 a.m., the moment the B-29 bomber dropped a plutonium bomb, Nagasaki survivors and other participants in the ceremony stood in a minute of silence to honor more than 70,000 lives lost.     The Aug. 9, 1945, bombing came three days after the United States made the world’s first atomic attack on Hiroshima, killing 140,000. Japan surrendered on Aug. 15, ending World War II.     The mayor also called Japan’s government and lawmakers to quickly sign the 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons that took effect in January.  Tokyo renounces its own possession, production or hosting of nuclear weapons, but as a U.S. ally Japan hosts 50,000 American troops and is protected by the U.S. nuclear umbrella. The post-WWII security arrangement complicates the push to get Japan to sign the treaty as it beefs up its own military while stepping up defense cooperation with other nuclear-weapons states such as Britain and France, to deal with threats from North Korea and China, among others. Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga said the security environment is severe and that global views are deeply divided over nuclear disarmament, and that it is necessary to remove distrust by promoting dialogue and form a mutual ground for discussion.  Taue also called for a substantial progress toward nuclear disarmament made at next year’s Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty conference, “starting with greater steps by the U.S. and Russia to reduce nuclear weapons.”     He asked Suga’s government to step up and speed up medical and welfare support for the aging atomic bombing survivors, or hibakusha, whose average age is now over 83 years. 
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Espionage between Taiwan and China has grown more sophisticated because of fewer people-to-people exchanges and more use of internet technology, as relations between the two countries remain chilled Taipei analysts say.  China claims sovereignty over Taiwan and insists that the two sides eventually unify, by force if needed. Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen, bolstered by domestic opinion polls, rejects unification and relations have soured since she took office in 2016. Analysts say those conditions make each side want to know more. Attention has riveted on spying over the past week as Taipei prosecutors evaluate whether former Deputy Defense Minister Chang Che-ping and others made contact with a representative of the Central Military Commission — China’s national defense organization — and if so, whether the contact constituted spying.Chang and his wife traveled to China, expenses paid, after he met a Hong Kong businessperson who the commission sent to Taiwan in 2012, Taiwan-based United Daily News reports.  The former deputy minister’s case would follow the 2019 flap over Chinese national Wang Liqiang, who defected to Australia and said he had secretly helped China in relation to Taiwan affairs. Earlier this year a Taiwan court gave jail sentences to two former Taiwanese legislative aides for setting up a network of Chinese spies. On the other side, Chinese security agencies have “foiled” hundreds of espionage cases involving spies from Taiwan and arrested several of them, China’s party-run Global Times news website reported in October.  “This is not an isolated operation, as the mainland carries out similar actions every year, given that the rising number of spying operations by Taiwan authorities in the Chinese mainland over the years,” the Global Times says.   Spying takes place now, as always, through business transactions and academic exchanges, as well as through use of internet tools, the experts say.  Intelligence gathering through hacking or mining public data can avoid the risk of detection that actual agents on the ground face. Such online methods are more important now because COVID-19 and cooled Taiwan-China relations have reduced face-to-face cross-border exchanges, the analysts add.    “In that sense, I think maybe the espionage is decreasing but the intensity may increase too,” said Alex Chiang, associate professor of international politics at National Chengchi University in Taipei. “The variety of espionage activity probably will be more diverse,” he said, adding that diminished personal contact reduces the odds of spies being caught, he added. Chang’s case would stand out because of his rank, said Chen Yi-fan, assistant professor of diplomacy and international relations at Tamkang University in Taiwan. “The former deputy defense minister’s case if true would be the highest-ranking military personnel who is involved in espionage cases,” he said.   Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council, the government body handling mainland China affairs, said in a November statement that in “recent years” China had “maliciously extended to overseas espionage” its effort to protect national security. The council had protested a month before over China’s “framing” of Taiwanese citizens to become spies.   FILE – Chinese President Xi Jinping shakes hands with Taiwan’s President Ma Ying-jeou during a summit in Singapore November 7, 2015.The signing of 23 transit, trade and investment deals with China under Taiwan’s former president Ma Ying-jeou had increased contact, expanding the pool of people who could buy and sell secrets.    Today’s tense relations have reduced the number of Chinese entrepreneurs and university students in Taiwan while cutting back academic visits by Taiwanese to China, meaning fewer in-person meetings presenting an opportunity for espionage.    From 2010 to 2016, Taiwan unearthed least 33 cases involving citizens who sold sensitive defense-related information to China, Hawaii-based Asia researcher and author William Sharp told VOA at the time. Taiwan Readies for Fresh Wave of Espionage by China

        Taiwan’s incoming ruling party is signaling its intention to get tougher on espionage by China as cross-strait relations sour and increased contact between the two sides makes spying easier.The Democratic Progressive Party government of President-elect Tsai Ing-wen intends to raise the military budget and experts said it may add a cyber-espionage unit to the defense ministry. 

 Cyber-spying poses a particular threat now, some experts say.  Chinese spies had used the internet for at least a decade before 2015, said Russell Hsiao, executive director of the Global Taiwan Institute policy incubator, on his blog. Hackers from a Chinese city “infiltrated” computers in Taiwan in one 2011 case and installed programs that “stole a large trove of data,” Hsiao said, citing local media reports. The attack infected 42 government websites and 216 computers.   Today’s hacker-spies today are hard to differentiate from Chinese “nationalists” who use the internet on their own to spite Taiwan, said Sean Su, an independent political analyst in Taipei.  China may be “ramping up”, he said. Although more reports of spying will emerge as Western countries focus harder on China’s activities directed at foreign countries, Su said, actual levels of the crime will probably hold constant. “We will think that there’s more spying but in reality, it feels like it’s just the same old, same old all this time,” he said. 
  
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The Brunei diplomat appointed by a Southeast Asian regional bloc as its special envoy to Myanmar said Saturday he should be given full access to all parties when he visits the strife-torn country, where the military overthrew an elected government.The Battle for Myanmar Six Months After the CoupMyanmar’s future is unclear despite junta leader’s promise of new electionsSpeaking days after his appointment by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Erywan Yusof gave no date for his visit to Myanmar, whose civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi and other officials have been detained since the February 1 coup.Erywan has been tasked with overseeing humanitarian aid, ending violence in Myanmar and opening dialogue between the military rulers and opponents, whose protests and civil disobedience campaign have been met with violence.”The planned visit to Myanmar is in the pipeline, and what we need to do is make sure we’re well prepared when we go there, unlike the visit I had in June,” Erywan, Brunei’s Second Foreign Affairs Minister, told reporters in Bandar Seri Begawan, the capital of the tiny sultanate of Borneo.Erywan said he would seek a more substantive discussion during his next planned ASEAN visit to Myanmar, while stressing it was important that he be given full access to all parties.Brunei Calls for ASEAN Meeting to Discuss Myanmar SituationProtesters remain defiant, gather in streets to clap for opposition leadersMyanmar civil society groups have rejected his appointment, saying ASEAN should have consulted opponents of the junta and other parties.The United Nations and many countries have urged ASEAN, whose 10 members include Myanmar, to spearhead diplomatic efforts to restore stability.Singapore’s foreign minister, Vivian Balakrishnan, said it was too early to say how long the ASEAN effort to foster talks would take, saying “political solutions, whilst essential, are difficult, and will take, in my view, prolonged negotiations and discussions.”He added: “Therefore, I would avoid trying to put unrealistic timelines.”Myanmar’s military ruler Min Aung Hlaing, who has assumed the post of interim prime minister, this week pledged to hold elections by 2023.His government says it acted within the constitution to remove Suu Kyi’s government, and objects to it being called a coup, and it also rejects the description of itself as a junta.
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A handful of Vietnamese interviewed during U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s recent visit here expressed support for the apparently warming relations between the two countries.Austin met with Vietnamese President Nguyen Xuan Phuc during his visit, and U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris will be in Vietnam and Singapore this month on a trip, the White House said, during which she “will engage the leaders of both governments on issues of mutual interest, including regional security, the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, and our joint efforts to promote a rules-based international order.”Thanh Thanh, who studies international relations in Hanoi, said that in the 25 years since normalization, Vietnam-U.S. relations have generally been stable and developed, and said she expected that to continue.“In the context of Vietnam and Southeast Asia in general playing an important role in the U.S. Indo-Pacific strategy, I think, looking forward, the two countries will continue to try to maintain peace to ensure the interests of both sides,” she told VOA on July 29.For those who benefit from the bilateral ties, a good relationship between Vietnam and the U.S. makes sense.Duong Thi Thu Thuy, a Vietnamese who was born in the 1970s and now works with a U.S. medical technology firm that is developing a laser therapy clinic system in Vietnam, looked forward to Austin’s visit with anticipation.“Through social media and my friends, I knew that the U.S. secretary of defense, Mr. Lloyd Austin, would visit Vietnam. I was very excited waiting for the day he was to come because this would be a good sign of expanding and deepening the Vietnam-U.S. relationship. Surely this is a good sign because it has been so long since the visits of former U.S. presidents,” she said.Thuy, formerly an English teacher during the 1990s and now based in Ho Chi Minh City, has reasons to support a good relationship between Vietnam and the U.S.“I have cooperated and developed products for an American factory in Vietnam. The Vietnam-U.S. relationship therefore has a good impact on our business environment. For example, it facilitates my trips to visit manufacturing factories in America, and easily learn about the American market,” she said.Many here are confident about the future of bilateral relations.“I think the relationship will develop more and more, and benefit the two countries and the people of the two in economy, culture, education and training, science and technology, etc.,” said a medical staff member, who asked not to be further identified.  In addition, she said she expects her children would benefit from improved U.S.-Vietnam relations, enjoying the results of Vietnam’s international integration, such as studying in the United States or elsewhere, making friends and traveling abroad more easily.“The relationship between Vietnam and the U.S. in the past years has had a positive impact on both countries, especially when the U.S. has supported Vietnam in training high-quality health workers and providing aid to the health sector in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic,” she said.A retired worker in publishing industry also lauded the benefits of cooperation with the U.S.“U.S. technology companies such as Microsoft, Facebook, and Google have come to Vietnam. They helped the citizens, especially the youth, even in remote areas, access world civilization,” he said.In addition, he said, the presence of a Vietnamese community in the U.S. would be a reason for him to support a stronger relationship between Hanoi and Washington.“Remittances sent by Vietnamese people in the U.S. every year are significant, helping the domestic economy. We also have relatives living in the U.S., so I have realistic feelings and a deep understanding of this,” he said.Most of those people who spoke to VOA also spoke favorably about U.S. presidents, especially those who visited Vietnam, or took a specific role in important milestones in Vietnam-U.S. relations, such as former Presidents Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump.Asked about President Joe Biden, interviewees credited him with COVID-19 vaccine donations and the recent move to resolve currency disputes with Vietnam.However, they also agreed that it is hard to comment about Vietnam-U.S. relations this early in his administration.“The relationship is stable, and there are not many significant developments,” Thanh Thanh said.Some others even see the relationship as “not much changed,” or say they are “not impressed yet.” 
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Authorities in the U.S. have arrested two Myanmar citizens residing in New York in connection with an alleged plot to kill their country’s ambassador to the United Nations, Kyaw Moe Tun, federal prosecutors say.According to a news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Southern District of New York, Phyo Hein Htut concocted a plan with an arms dealer in Thailand who sells weapons to the Myanmar military. Under the plan, Phyo Hein Htut would “hire attackers to hurt the Ambassador in an attempt to force the Ambassador to step down from his post. If the Ambassador did not step down, then the Arms Dealer proposed that the attackers hired by Htut would kill the Ambassador.”The second defendant, Ye Hein Zaw, allegedly was going to send money to Phyo Hein Htut to finance the attack, which was to take place near New York City.Each defendant is charged with one count of conspiracy to assault and make a violent attack upon a foreign official, which carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison.Myanmar’s military, which overthrew the government of civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi on February 1, has been trying to remove Kyaw Moe Tun, who opposes the military junta, from his post at the U.N. and replace him. Kyaw Moe Tun told Agence France-Presse on Wednesday that his life had been threatened and that he was given additional security.In late February, Kyaw Moe Tun spoke passionately before the U.N.”We will continue to fight for a government which is of the people, by the people, for the people,” Kyaw Moe Tun said, his voice cracking. He then spoke briefly in his native Burmese to address his fellow citizens listening in Myanmar, which is also known as Burma.”I would like to request to all of you to keep on fighting,” he urged his countrymen, according to a translation of his remarks. “The revolution must succeed.”Messages seeking comment from the suspects’ lawyers were not immediately returned, The Associated Press said, and a message and phone call seeking comment were sent to the Myanmar mission to the U.N.Nearly 950 people have been killed, more than 7,000 have been arrested and 5,502 are still detained since the coup began on February 1, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (Burma), a human rights organization based in Thailand and Myanmar.Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Reuters and AFP.
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