A powerful mudslide carrying a deluge of black water and debris crashed into rows of houses in a town west of Tokyo following heavy rains on Saturday, leaving at least 19 people missing, officials said.Dozens of homes may have been buried in Atami, a town known for hot springs, said Shizuoka prefecture spokesperson Takamichi Sugiyama.Public broadcaster NHK gave the number of missing people at 20, but Sugiyama said the prefecture confirmed at least 19, although he said the number may grow.Torrential rains have slammed parts of Japan starting earlier this week. Experts said dirt had been loosened, increasing landslide risks in a country filled with valleys and mountains.Shizuoka Gov. Heita Kawakatsu told reporters that the Coast Guard had discovered two people who had been washed into the sea by the mudslide. Their hearts had stopped, but their deaths were not yet officially declared, he said. Other details of their identity were not released.“I offer my deepest condolences to everyone who has suffered,” he said, adding that utmost efforts will be made to rescue lives.Both Kawakatsu and Sugiyama said it had been raining hard in the area all morning. Self-defense forces will join firefighters and police in the rescue operation, and a minister from the national government had also arrived, they said.Japanese media reports said Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga called an emergency meeting for his Cabinet.Evacuation warnings were issued for a wide area, including the so-called “Level 5,” which is the highest possible alert.The landslides appeared to have struck multiple times, about as fast as a car. Footage showed a powerful, black mudslide slither down a mountain, knocking over and crushing houses and sweeping away cars in its path. Helpless neighbors watched in horror, some recording on their phones.NHK TV footage showed a part of a bridge had collapsed.Atami is a quaint seaside resort area in Shizuoka prefecture, about 100 kilometers southwest of Tokyo. The area that was hit by the mudslide, Izusan, includes hot springs, residential areas, shopping streets and a famous shrine. 
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The United States on Friday announced sanctions against military officials and individuals and companies tied to Myanmar’s military in the latest response to the February 1 coup in the Southeast Asian country.  The U.S. Treasury Department officially sanctioned seven senior military officials for the government’s use of lethal force against pro-democracy supporters. It also sanctioned 15 individuals who are family members of previously sanctioned officials and whose “financial networks have contributed to military officials’ ill-gotten gains.”The Treasury’s statement emphasized that these sanctions are not directed at the citizens of Myanmar and are intended to increase financial burdens on Myanmar’s military by cutting off all 22 designated individuals from any assets they may have in the U.S. In a complementary action, the Department of Commerce restricted trade exports to four companies it said support the military’s ongoing actions. Commerce identified the companies as King Royal Technologies Co. Ltd., which “provides satellite communications services” to the Myanmar military, and three copper mining entities with financial ties to the regime: Wanbao Mining and its two subsidiaries, Myanmar Wanbao Mining Copper Ltd. and Myanmar Yang Tse Copper Ltd. All four companies were placed on the department’s trade blacklist, officially known as the entity list, which restricts U.S. exports to entities on the list with limited exceptions.Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo speaks during a press briefing at the White House, in Washington, April 7, 2021.“We continue encouraging like-minded allies and partners to join the United States in imposing costs on these four entities and clamping down on other sources of revenue that support the repressive and undemocratic activities of the Burmese military,” said Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo in a Friday statement. “The U.S. government will continue to promote accountability for the perpetrators of the coup and stand with the people of Burma and their democratic institutions.”The increased restrictions come just days after the U.N. released its latest update on the continuing violence against citizens in Myanmar. According to the report, the military has killed at least 883 unarmed people and detained over 5,200 activists, journalists and opponents of the coup. An additional 2,000 people with active warrants for their arrest are in hiding. “The U.N. team in Myanmar continues to strongly condemn the widespread use of lethal force and other serious violations of human rights,” said U.N. spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric. “Our colleagues underscore that the use of excessive force by security forces, including the use of live ammunition, must stop and must stop now.”Myanmar’s military overthrew the newly elected government of the National League for Democracy in February over claims that the election results were fraudulent. The country’s election commission rejected the military’s claims of fraud. Despite a lack of evidence, the military overtook the government by invoking an article from the country’s 2008 constitution that allows it to declare a one-year state of emergency. During the coup, the military arrested Aung San Suu Kyi, who is the leader of the National League for Democracy party and received a Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 for her efforts to democratize the country. In June, 119 member countries of the U.N., including the U.S., officially condemned the coup. Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters.
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Thousands of people were being evacuated from villages around a rumbling volcano near the Philippine capital Friday, but officials said they faced another dilemma of ensuring emergency shelters will not turn into epicenters of COVID-19 infections.The alert was raised to three on a five-level scale after Taal Volcano blasted a dark gray plume into the sky Thursday. The five-minute steam- and gas-driven explosion was followed by four smaller emissions, but the volcano was generally calm on Friday, volcanologists said.Level three means “magma is near or at the surface, and activity could lead to hazardous eruption in weeks,” according to the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology. Level five means a life-threatening eruption is occurring that could endanger communities.The agency asked people to stay away from a small island in a scenic lake where Taal sits and is considered a permanent danger zone along with a number of nearby lakeside villages in Batangas province south of Manila.An eruption of Taal last year displaced hundreds of thousands of people and briefly closed Manila’s international airport. However, the volcano agency’s chief, Renato Solidum, said it was too early to know if the volcano’s current unrest will lead to a full-blown eruption.The preemptive evacuations that began late Thursday involved residents in five high-risk villages in the lakeside towns of Laurel and Agoncillo.More than 14,000 people may have to be moved temporarily away from the volcano, said Mark Timbal, a spokesman for the government’s disaster-response agency.Town officials, however, faced an extra predicament of ensuring emergency shelters, usually school buildings, basketball gymnasiums and even Roman Catholic church grounds, would not become coronavirus hotspots. Displaced villagers were asked to wear face masks and were sheltered in tents set safely apart, requiring considerably more space than in pre-pandemic times. In Laurel town, Imelda Reyes feared for her and her family’s safety in their home near the volcano and in the crowded grade school-turned-evacuation center where they took shelter Friday.“If we stay home, the volcano can explode anytime,” Reyes told The Associated Press. “But here, just one sick person can infect all of us. Both are dangerous choices.”Reyes, who washes laundry and has four children, wept in desperation as she said she and her husband, a corn farmer, wanted to leave the evacuation camp for a friend’s house in northern Nueva Ecija province but lamented they did not have money for the bus fare.Most evacuation camps have set up isolation areas in case anyone began showing COVID-19 symptoms.“It’s doubly difficult now. Before, we just asked people to rush to the evacuation centers and squeeze themselves in as much as possible,” said disaster-response officer Junfrance De Villa of Agoncillo town.“Now, we have to keep a close eye on the numbers. We’re doing everything to avoid congestion,” De Villa told The Associated Press by telephone.A nearby town safely away from the restive volcano could accommodate up to 12,000 displaced Agoncillo residents in pre-pandemic times but could only shelter half of that now. A laidback town of more than 40,000 people, Agoncillo has reported more than 170 COVID-19 cases but only about a dozen remain ill. At least 11 residents have died, he said.The 311-meter Taal, one of the world’s smallest volcanoes, erupted in January last year, displacing hundreds of thousands of people and sending clouds of ash to Manila, about 65 kilometers to the north, where the main airport was temporarily shut down.Heavy ashfall also buried an abandoned fishing community, which thrived for years in the shadow of Taal on an island in Taal Lake, and shut down a popular district of tourist inns, restaurants, spas and wedding venues.The Philippines lies along the Pacific “Ring of Fire,” a region prone to earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. A long-dormant volcano, Mount Pinatubo, blew its top north of Manila in 1991 in one of the biggest volcanic eruptions of the 20th century, killing hundreds of people.
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A small volcano near the Philippine capital belched a dark plume of steam and ash into the sky in a brief explosion Thursday, prompting officials to start evacuating thousands of villagers from high-risk areas.Government experts said magmatic materials came into contact with water in the main crater of Taal Volcano in Batangas province, setting off the steam-driven blast with no accompanying volcanic earthquake. They said it’s unclear if the volcanic unrest could lead to a full-blown eruption.”It’s just one explosive event; it’s too early to tell,” Renato Solidum of the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology said at a news conference. Three smaller steam-driven emissions occurred Thursday night, he said.The agency raised the alarm at 311-meter Taal, one of the world’s smallest volcanoes, to the third of a five-step warning system, meaning “magma is near or at the surface, and activity could lead to hazardous eruption in weeks.”Alert level 5 means a life-threatening eruption that could endanger communities is occurring.Mark Timbal, a spokesman for the government’s disaster-response agency, said officials started to evacuate residents from five high-risk villages. Up to 14,000 residents may have to be moved temporarily away from the restive volcano, he said.Officials reminded people to stay away from a small island in a scenic lake where Taal is located and is considered a permanent danger zone along with a number of nearby lakeside villages.The ABS-CBN network broadcast videos of some residents with their belongings in cars and motorcycles forming a line at a gasoline station. Residents said they did not feel any tremors but reported a volcanic sulfur smell.Batangas Gov. Hermilando Mandanas said evacuation camps, trucks, food packs and face masks were ready in case the volcanic unrest escalated and more people needed to be moved to safety. There were concerns that crowding in evacuation camps might spread the coronavirus in a region that has seen a spike in cases in recent months.Taal erupted in January 2020, displacing hundreds of thousands of people and sending clouds of ash to Manila, about 65 kilometers to the north, where the main airport was temporarily shut down.The Philippines lies along the Pacific “Ring of Fire,” a region prone to earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. A long-dormant volcano, Mount Pinatubo, blew its top north of Manila in 1991 in one of the biggest volcanic eruptions of the 20th century, killing hundreds of people.  
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The suspicious death in December 2020 of a Uyghur plant biology researcher at a detention facility in Xinjiang has drawn attention on social media.Mihriay Erkin, 29, left her job at Japan’s Nara Technology and Science Institute in June 2019 and returned to China over concerns about the safety of her parents in Xinjiang. She was arbitrarily detained and sent to the Yanbulaq detention center in Kashgar in February 2020.Her relatives blame Chinese authorities for her death, which they say they learned about only recently. China denies all allegations pertaining to the persecution of Uyghurs and calls the internment camps “vocational institutes” that deradicalize extremists.“I learned the news almost six months after my niece Mihriay was killed by Chinese authorities, but I still don’t know if she has an actual grave or not,” said Abduweli Ayup,  Erkin’s uncle and a Norway-based Uyghur rights activist.Ayup launched a social media campaign last week with Uyghur activists to highlight Erkin and demand that China disclose the circumstances surrounding her death.Father, aunt detainedMihriay Erkin’s father, Erkin Ayup, a former Chinese government official, and her aunt, Sajidigul Ayup, a former high school teacher, had been detained by Chinese authorities for almost two years in Xinjiang when Mihriay decided to leave Japan in 2019.The oldest of two siblings, Erkin moved to Japan in 2014 to pursue a master’s degree in plant biology at Tokyo University.Abduweli Ayup said he warned Erkin against returning to Xinjiang, but she ignored the advice after local Chinese police used her mother to lure her back. Her last words to him before she left were, “If I die, if I have a grave, a bouquet of peonies will mark my grave.””My niece died in [a] detention center, and her father and aunt were sentenced to 12 and 14 years in prison,” he said. He added that it was unclear whether Erkin’s mother and brother were also detained, as he has lost contact with them.Beijing’s Persecution of Uyghurs Reaches Nearly 30 Countries, Report FindsNew study indicates Beijing has stepped up persecution of Uyghurs overseas since 2017According to a report July 10 by Amnesty International, China’s extreme measures toward Uyghurs and other Muslim minority groups in Xinjiang constitute “crimes against humanity.”“Chinese authorities have built one of the world’s most sophisticated surveillance systems and a vast network of hundreds of grim ‘transformation-through-education’ centers — actually, internment camps — throughout Xinjiang,” the report said. During a news conference in Beijing on June 11, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin accused the watchdog organization of misleading the public through “lies” about Xinjiang.“Its so-called report is like adding one more page to its ‘record of lies,’” Wang said about the Amnesty International report.Neither Wang nor any Xinjiang official has responded to Uyghur activists’ requests for information about how Erkin died in detention.Diaspora targetedRushan Abbas, an American Uyghur rights activist and executive director of the Washington-based Campaign for Uyghurs, told VOA that Erkin’s fate marked a growing push by Beijing to target Uyghur diaspora members who speak up about Xinjiang human rights violations.“My heart breaks for Mihriay, for Abduweli, and for the millions of Uyghurs around the world who are facing these same fears and trials,” Abbas told VOA.Her sister, Gulshan Abbas, a retired doctor in China, was arbitrarily detained and sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2019.“I am scared for my sister and pray that she is staying strong, but that love I have for my sister and for my people fuels me with strength to fight harder,” Abbas said.According to a joint report recently published by the Oxus Society for Central Asian Affairs and the Uyghur Human Rights Project, many diaspora Uyghurs have been encouraged to return home by the government via messages on WeChat or phone calls from relatives, only to be arrested upon arrival.
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The decision by Myanmar’s junta leader Min Aung Hlaing to visit Russia before next-door neighbor China highlights his military’s easier relations with Moscow and hopes of drawing the Kremlin closer to avoid relying on Beijing alone, analysts say. Min Aung Hlaing visited Russia last week for a three-day international security conference.   China and Russia have been the junta’s most powerful allies since the military, or Tatmadaw, toppled Myanmar’s democratically elected government four months ago. Amid international rebuke of the military’s bloody crackdown on peaceful protests, Beijing and Moscow have blocked efforts in the United Nations Security Council to pressure the junta to back down. The two are also Myanmar’s main arms suppliers.   As a neighbor, China has the far older, deeper and intricate ties to Myanmar. It is the country’s top trade partner and a major investor. Myanmar also figures large in Beijing’s sprawling Belt and Road Initiative, offering China a new route to the Indian Ocean and vital oil and gas supplies in the Middle East.   Instead of making Beijing his first stop outside of Southeast Asia since the coup, though, Min Aung Hlaing headed to Moscow on June 20 for the security conference. The visit included meetings with Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev.   Those who watch Myanmar closely were not surprised by the choice.   “Moscow’s support for the new regime has been unequivocal and the junta chief was assured of a warm welcome from a major international power and the opportunity to discuss expanding military and economic cooperation,” said Anthony Davis, a Bangkok-based security analyst with Janes defense publications.   “The relationship with China has been far testier given Beijing’s dissatisfaction over the chaos triggered by the coup, and longstanding Tatmadaw suspicion over Chinese goals and support for certain ethnic insurgent groups,” he said.   Foul weather friend Smuggling, gambling operations and weapons flows between southern China and northeast Myanmar have been helping prop up ethnic minority rebel armies fighting the Tatmadaw for autonomy along the border for decades, a major thorn in the military’s side. Last year Min Aung Hlaing openly complained about a “foreign country” backing some of the rebels.   “Though he did not mention the name of this country, it was automatically known that he referred to China,” said Ye Myo Hein, who heads the Tagaung Institute for Political Studies, a Myanmar think tank.   He noted too that Min Aung Hlaing was speaking to Russian state media on a trip to Russia.   FILE – Commander-in-Chief of Myanmar’s armed forces, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing delivers his speech at the IX Moscow conference on international security in Moscow, June 23, 2021. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko, Pool)As both a neighbor and big investor, China is also far more worried than Russia about the violence and economic nosedive the February 1 coup has sparked or inflamed, he added. Financial forecasters say Myanmar’s gross domestic product may plummet by as much as 20% this year. Assassinations and bomb attacks targeting government administrators and facilities are tearing through the country, while long-dormant standoffs between the Tatmadaw and some rebel armies have flared up.   Ye Myo Hein said Min Aung Hlaing traveled to Russia before China to avoid the added pressure that would come with a trip to Beijing to stick to a five-point plan for saving Myanmar from collapse drawn up by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.   “He knows China will not give blank check support, which the coup leaders will not be happy about. China has a great deal of concern with instability and the spillover effects in neighboring countries. That’s why it is pushing the five-point consensus from ASEAN, but the junta has not been ready to follow it,” he said.   Min Aung Hlaing reportedly agreed to the plan during a special meeting of the bloc in Jakarta in April, including an immediate end to violence and negotiations with “all parties concerned,” but has shown no sign of following though since then.   Balancing Beijing Davis said Russia also offers Myanmar “a critical great-power counterbalance to the sort of over-reliance on Beijing seen in the 1990s.”   Min Aung Hlaing’s decision to attend the security conference in Moscow rather than send a representative may signal his interest to draw Russia even closer, said Moe Thuzar, a Myanmar analyst at Singapore’s Institute of Southeast Asian Studies.   “So the decision to make Russia the destination of his first visit out of the region would be motivated by Min Aung Hlaing’s interest to seek more legitimacy and more strategic support, and present that balancing and diversification element to existing relations with China,” she said.   To date, Russia has filled that role largely as an arms supplier, and an ever more important one. The Tatmadaw has bought more military hardware from China over its history. In the past two decades, though, it has sourced nearly as much from Russia as from China, according to data collected by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.   The same data show the Tatmadaw lately turning to Russia mainly for airpower, from surface-to-air missiles to helicopters and fighter jets. Davis said Russian hardware’s superior quality and competitive prices make them a better deal than their Chinese alternatives, and that the Tatmadaw’s possible purchase of more planes and armored vehicles — and interest in Kilo-class submarines — could soon make Russia Myanmar’s top arms supplier. Whether that happens will depend in large part on how much the junta can afford as the economy tumbles, he added.   Those financial woes are also why Min Aung Hlaing wants to move relations with Russia beyond the military-to-military level they are mostly at now, said Ye Myo Hein.   With Western governments imposing targeted sanctions and foreign companies holding off on new deals, he said the junta “urgently needs more investment as the economy is tremendously going down. Currently there will be investment only from China, and I think the junta is trying to invite more investments from other countries,” Russia included.   Value systems Ye Myo Hein said the junta will entice Russia with the promise of more weapons sales and may even offer up Myanmar’s ports for calls from Russia’s navy on any forays it makes into the Indian Ocean.   Ian Storey, another analyst at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, said Russia would like to expand its presence in the ocean, having forged close security ties with India but has few friendly ports along the way from Vladivostok on Russia’s east coast. He said a reliable stop in Myanmar would help but added the limited number of warships in the Russian navy’s Western Pacific fleet would keep those trips modest “for the foreseeable future.”   The Russian navy may send the odd ship or two into the Indian Ocean using Myanmar as a stepping stone, but not in any numbers to shift the balance of power there, said Eugene Rumer, a Russia expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.   He said Russia’s naval ambitions will remain elsewhere, including the north Atlantic and northeast Pacific.   Rumer said Moscow will seek some business concessions for the diplomatic cover it gives Myanmar’s junta but, like others, he does not expect Russia to prove the economic lifeline the junta may be looking for.   Analysts say that role will continue to go mainly to China.   What the junta does also offer Russia is another chance to chip away at the West’s push for an international relations regime based on democratic values, said Rumer. By coming to the aid of pariah states from Venezuela to Zimbabwe, and now Myanmar, he said Moscow hopes to advance a regime void of those values, much in line with Beijing.   “It undercuts U.S. insistence on values as being a major aspect of our foreign policy,” he said. “The flip side of it is that it helps show that the United States is not omnipotent; it brings it down a peg or two. And it brings Russia and China closer together, something that [Russian President Vladimir] Putin has made part of his foreign policy priorities.”  
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Amid rising caseloads of coronavirus infections as it emerges from a strict COVID lockdown, Cambodia is pinning its hopes on a vaccination rollout that will help the nation reach herd immunity, even as the nation confronts unique challenges that could hamper that effort.Daily case numbers reached a record high of 1,130 Wednesday, far more than reported in April, when severe lockdowns, bans on alcohol sales and travel between provinces were imposed.Cambodia, though, like most developing countries, faces a range of problems not typically associated with wealthier countries in the West, particularly overcrowding in the capital, Phnom Penh, where several people often rent one room, in some cases one bed, to find a few hours’ sleep, away from the grind outside.Bradley Murg, a senior adviser to the Cambodian Institute for Cooperation and Peace, told VOA people here simply don’t have the space, security, or access to health services and supermarkets as those in the leafy suburbs of Western cities in countries such as the United States or Australia.“In a highly densely populated city like Phnom Penh, it’s incredibly difficult to implement a lockdown effectively even with a whole-of-government approach,” he said.“There are naturally going to be challenges in light of the level of development, in light of the daily needs of the population et cetera,” he added.“Ultimately a permanent lockdown or long-term lockdown is simply not a feasible strategy in Cambodia or in Phnom Penh specifically.”The closure of markets resulted in food shortages and price gouging, with authorities struggling to enforce lockdowns after dividing the capital into yellow, orange and red zones, depending on case numbers and transmissions – with red areas containing the greatest risks.Restrictions have eased, but schools, bars, gyms and many other businesses remain closed, while restaurant hours have been curtailed with strict social distancing and other health measures in place.Hang Sokunthea, an academic and author of I Am a Daughter, a book about female empowerment in Cambodia, said life during the pandemic has been harsh on the poor.“A lot of the poor families live very close to each other, which is where a lot of the red zones was located, where they live together and then they spread the COVID infection even faster,” she told VOA.Moreover, she said, “without the market, without having the living income, they just cannot really make much of a living,” she said.The situation resulted in a cat-and-mouse game between the police and vendors, Hang Sokunthea said, adding, “they were just selling anything on the streets even with the police chasing them.”Keo Savady is a small business operator, selling clothes online, and, like many from Cambodia’s burgeoning middle classes, she too is feeling the pinch after losing her job at the Hard Rock Cafe in Phnom Penh.“The bad thing is I just start my new online business, a small online business, and it doesn’t work because of the situation, COVID-19 is not so good,” she said, adding, “me and my family, some of them lost their job, so we had to find a smaller room.”Cambodia had emerged relatively unscathed from the pandemic during its first year but that changed on Feb. 20 when, authorities say, two Chinese women bribed their way out of quarantine, went out dancing and spread the disease.Since then, the number of confirmed cases has climbed from less than 500 to more than 50,000 with more than 44,143 recoveries and 602 deaths.However, Cambodia is ranked second, after Singapore, in its vaccination rollout among the 10 Association of South East Asian Nations countries after securing about 11 million doses of Sinopharm and Sinovac from China.It says a total of 20 million doses will be secured by August, while funding from Australia and the United States has enabled access to the COVAX-facility and AstraZenica vaccinations.“When one places Singapore in comparison to Cambodia in terms of level of development, level of infrastructure etcetera – it’s truly remarkable that Cambodia’s had this level of success in its all-of-government campaign to rollout vaccinations as quickly as possible,” Murg said.“The kingdom is well on track towards meeting its goals and it’s a story that has not received nearly the attention it deserves,” he added.Almost 18% of Cambodia’s population of 16.5 million people have been fully vaccinated with two doses, while a quarter of its population have received a single dose.Cambodia hopes to reach herd immunity with 10 million people vaccinated by the end of the year and it wants to reopen its tourism industry in the fourth quarter to fully vaccinated tourists.
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A Hong Kong pro-democracy activist and human rights lawyer was arrested for the second time in less than a month Wednesday, marking the city’s first year under the national security law. Chow Hang Tung, a vice chair for the nonprofit Hong Kong Alliance, was arrested for inciting illegal assembly, which was scheduled to take place July 1. She was also arrested June 4 for the same charge, according to Richard Tsoi, the group’s secretary-general.  Anniversaries in Hong Kong are common this time of year. June 4 marks Beijing’s crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square in 1989, while July 1 marks the anniversary of Hong Kong’s handover from Britain to China, 24 years ago. July 1 also marks the 100th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party. Chow was initially arrested in early June for allegedly inciting unauthorized assembly to commemorate the Tiananmen Square crackdown. She was released on bail two days later, but according to news reports, police have now revoked her bail. A FILE – Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai, center, who founded local newspaper Apple Daily, is arrested under the new national security law by police officers at his home, Aug. 10, 2020.The law prohibits secession, subversion and foreign collusion. Since its enactment, it has been the catalyst for a political crackdown in the city. Dozens of activists have been charged under the law, including Jimmy Lai, the billionaire tycoon and founder of pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily. The newspaper was forced to close last week after authorities arrested several executives and froze the company’s financial assets. Next Digital, Apple Daily’s parent company, is set to close July 1. In an interview Wednesday with VOA, Chow, who anticipates more arrests and crackdowns, spoke candidly about her constant push for change in Hong Kong. “I believe that we should not dissolve or disarm ourselves just because of the political pressure,” she said. 
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Human Rights Watch says Chinese students enrolled in Australian universities have  been so intimidated by authorities back home they are self-censoring their actions and behaviors.The organization issued a report Wednesday highlighting incidents of harassment directed at Chinese students, based on interviews with 24 students from mainland China and Hong Kong, who expressed pro-democracy views. They said their pro-Beijing classmates threatened to expose their addresses and other personal information online, a process known as doxxing, or report their activities to the Chinese Embassy.The report also mentioned three cases where police in China warned family members about a student’s activities in Australia. It also revealed the students were threatened by their pro-Beijing classmates.Sophie McNeill, the author of the report, said the students curbed their activities out of fear for the well-being of their families back in China. McNeill says the students did not report the incidents to their universities because they believed officials cared more about maintaining their relationships with Beijing.McNeill also says more than half of 22 academics interviewed for the report say they have become more cautious about what they discuss about China during their lectures.Human Rights Watch is calling on the Australian government to issue an annual report on incidents of harassment and censorship faced by international students, and for universities to take action against any students who engage in such intimidation.The Chinese Embassy denounced the report as “rubbish” in a statement issued Wednesday. It said Human Rights Watch “has decayed into a political tool for the West to attack and smear developing countries,” and “is always biased on China.”Australian Education Minister Alan Tudge says the Human Rights Watch report raised “deeply concerning issues,” and that he was seeking advice from parliament’s powerful intelligence and security committee, which was already investigating national security risks in the higher education sector.Information from the Associated Press and Reuters was used in this report.  
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Another major Australian city is under a coronavirus lockdown as local officials clash with the federal government over which age group should be eligible for a COVID-19 vaccine. The city of Alice Springs entered a three-day lockdown effective Tuesday after an infected gold mine worker spent several hours in the city’s airport before flying from the Northern Territory state to his home in Adelaide, the capital of South Australia state, where he tested positive after his arrival.   A transit worker is seen wearing a face mask inside a mostly empty city center train station during a lockdown in Sydney, Australia, June 29, 2021.Alice Springs joins Sydney, Darwin, Brisbane and Perth on the list of cities who have imposed lockdowns to blunt the spread of the highly infectious delta variant of COVID-19.  The latest outbreak has been traced to a Sydney airport limousine driver who had been transporting international air crews.  Australia has been largely successful in containing the spread of COVID-19 due to aggressive lockdown efforts, posting just 30,602 total confirmed cases and 910 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center.  But it has proved vulnerable to fresh outbreaks due to a slow rollout of its vaccination campaign and confusing requirements involving the two-shot AstraZeneca vaccine, which is the dominant vaccine in its stockpile.  FILE – People wait in line outside a coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccination center at Sydney Olympic Park in Sydney, Australia, June 23, 2021.Health officials had limited AstraZeneca to all adults under 60 years old due to concerns of a rare blood clotting condition that has been blamed for the deaths of two people.  But Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced Monday that AstraZeneca will be available for adults under 40 years of age who request it.  Queensland state Chief Health Officer Jeannette Young pushed back against the prime minister’s announcement Tuesday, saying it was not worth the risk for healthy young Australians, even though the chances of developing the blood clotting condition are rare.  “I don’t want an 18-year-old in Queensland dying from a clotting illness who, if they got COVID, probably wouldn’t die,” Young said.Western Australian state Premier Mark McGowan also openly opposed Morrison’s announcement, citing advice from the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunization, the government’s vaccine advisor, to recommend only the two-shot Pfizer vaccine for adults younger than 60 years old.  Pfizer is in far less supply in Australia than the AstraZeneca shot.  Delta variantThe Indonesian Red Cross is warning the delta variant has caused a surge of new infections that is pushing the nation towards “the edge of a COVID-19 catastrophe.” A health worker gives a jab of the Sinovac COVID-19 vaccine to a woman during a vaccination campaign at the Adam Malik Hospital in Medan, North Sumatra, Indonesia, June 30, 2021.Indonesia has reported more than 20,000 new COVID-19 infections in recent days, including a record 21,342 new cases on Sunday, including more than 400 new deaths. The Red Cross says hospitals in the capital, Jakarta, are more than 90 percent occupied, while less than 5% of its 270 million citizens have been vaccinated.   Russia reported a single-day record 669 COVID-19 deaths on Wednesday, breaking the previous record set just the day before of 643 deaths. The fast-moving spread of the delta variant of COVID-19, which was first detected in India and has now been identified in more than 80 countries, has prompted the World Health Organization to urge people to continue wearing masks and taking other precautions, even if they are fully vaccinated. Officials in Los Angeles County, California said Monday they are strongly recommending residents wear a mask indoors because of the delta variant.  The COVID-19 pandemic has sickened nearly 182 million people around the globe since it was first detected in late 2019 in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, including nearly 4 million deaths.  A report issued Wednesday by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development and the U.N. World Tourism Organization said the pandemic caused as much as $2.4 trillion in losses to international tourism and other related sectors in 2020, a decline of 73% from pre-pandemic levels the year before.   The report predicts roughly the same amount of losses for 2021, with global tourism to fall anywhere between 63% and 75%, resulting in losses between $1.7-2.4 trillion dollars.     
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North Korean leader Kim Jong Un says a “grave incident” has threatened his country’s coronavirus prevention efforts — a rare admission by Pyongyang, which claims to be free of COVID-19.During a Politburo meeting of the ruling Workers’ Party, Kim chastised senior officials for unspecified carelessness related to the coronavirus pandemic, the state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said Wednesday.The officials “have caused a grave incident that poses a huge crisis to the safety of the nation and its people,” KCNA said. The report provided no details about the “grave incident” or how it posed a threat.  FILE – A station employee checks the temperature of a passenger to help prevent the spread of COVID-19, in Pyongyang, in this undated picture released from North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency on Aug. 29, 2020. (KCNA via KNS / AFP)North Korea continues to insist it has found zero cases of COVID-19, a nearly impossible claim that is widely disputed by global health experts.  It is not clear whether Wednesday’s admission of failure reflects any wider change in North Korea’s approach to the virus or if it was a pretext for other domestic plans. The KCNA report said that several senior officials were replaced during the Politburo meeting, though it did not say if the moves were related to the coronavirus incident. “The regime may … be using the incident as a way to engage in a small purge, getting rid of unwanted elements and underscoring Kim’s rule by fear,” said Mason Richey, a professor at South Korea’s Hankuk University of Foreign Studies. “The public statement also provides a built-in excuse for future economic downturns.” Since January 2020, North Korea has closed its borders, restricted domestic travel and even cut off nearly all trade with its economic lifeline, China.  FILE – A health worker sprays disinfectant as part of preventative efforts against COVID-19, at the Okryu restaurant in Pyongyang, Oct. 21, 2020.Kim has repeatedly warned of a “prolonged” lockdown amid what he says is a worsening global pandemic. State media have warned vaccines produced overseas are no “panacea.”COVAX, the global vaccine-sharing program, had expected to send nearly 2 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine to North Korea by the first half of this year. But that has been delayed in part because of ongoing negotiations between COVAX and Pyongyang. An outbreak in North Korea could be extremely dangerous because many parts of the country are impoverished and lack an adequate health care system.In a report last week, the World Health Organization said North Korea claimed it had conducted over 31,000 COVID-19 tests, all of which came back negative.Last July, North Korea seemed to briefly admit that COVID-19 might have entered its borders. State media blamed a North Korean “runaway” who had fled for South Korea but returned to the North.  North Korea said the man was “suspected to have been infected with the vicious virus” but later said his COVID-19 test results were “uncertain.” 
 
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Migrant workers from Cambodia and Myanmar are being asked to sign contracts they cannot read in order to work in Thailand’s fishing fleet, a new study has found, undercutting efforts to expunge abuses from a sector worth billions of dollars to the Southeast Asian country.Thailand is one of the world’s largest fish and seafood producers, boasting global brands that include John West and Chicken of the Sea.
 
Authorities have been scrambling for several years to clean up an industry riddled with abuses, though, after grim revelations of human trafficking of Thais and migrant workers, forced work, defaults on payments, beatings and even murders on fishing boats.
 
All of this contributed to the U.S State Department dropping Thailand onto the worst possible ranking — Tier 3 — of its annual Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report in 2015, as well as threats by the European Union to suspend seafood imports for alleged illegal and overfishing.
 
However, Thai government efforts to register all workers with contracts, identity cards and e-payments to ensure salaries are paid rather than deferred — alongside wider prosecution of human traffickers — have helped the kingdom move into Tier 2.
 
Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-O-Cha has said he hopes his country will be elevated to the top tier — compliant with U.S. standards — after an extensive campaign to monitor the fishing sector, including spot inspections and electronic tags to track unscrupulous boat owners.
 
The latest TIP report is expected to be published in the coming weeks; but a survey by the ITF-Fishers’ Rights Network, shows that basic legal protections for workers are still not being met.    
Of 520 fishers surveyed at Thai ports between March-June 2021, the FRN said just a tiny fraction had even had their contracts translated into their native languages.
 
“A shocking 89 percent of fishers had not had their contract translated or explained to them in a language they could understand,” said Jon Hartough, ITF-FRN Thailand Project Lead.  
 
“Quite often fishers are recruited in rural areas of Myanmar and Cambodia … it’s a verbal contract when they are told what the terms and conditions will be. But when they sign the document, it’s unclear what the conditions are, they are signing,” he added.  
 
“This is important … because of how this manifests in working conditions.”  UN: Thailand’s Fishing Industry Fixing Some Abuses

        Thailand’s fishing and seafood industry has made some improvement in working conditions, including less physical violence, but problems such as unfair pay and deception in contracting persist, a survey conducted by the U.N.’s International Labor Organization found.The European Union in 2015 gave Thailand a “yellow card” on its fishing exports, warning that it could face a ban on EU sales if it didn’t reform the industry. 

 
Vulnerable fishers are often low-skilled and desperate for income — a condition worsened by the coronavirus pandemic, as well as Myanmar’s economic collapse following a February 1 coup.
 
“Burmese and Khmer fishers still face serious issues such as wage theft, lack of adequate food or clean drinking water on board, debt bondage, document retention and other labor abuses,” according to Ye Thwe, FRN president and former fisherman.
 
“The Thai government commitments are as thin as the paper they’re written on. Labor violations are still rampant, and contracts are not being properly followed,” he said, adding fishers often report late or incomplete payments, dangerous conditions at sea and deliberately misleading contracts – where they exist at all.
 
The Department of Fisheries says it has translated government guidelines into fishers’ languages, so they know their rights under tightened Thai laws.  “The DOF has prepared a manual for commercial fishermen … in an easy-to-understand language and distributed it to fishermen, to build knowledge and understanding of legal guidelines,” Mesak Pakdeekong, director general of the Department of Fisheries, told reporters in early June.
 
Meanwhile, authorities have released a ‘PROTECT-U’ multilingual app to help victims of trafficking seek urgent help safely.  While not named in the FRN study, big seafood companies including Thai Union, which owns Chicken of the Sea, say they have made major strides to clean up their supply chains and adhere strictly to government rules.
But labor rights groups say the recruitment system is prone to abuses.
 
Brokers travel across poor rural areas of Southeast Asia persuading desperate workers to go to sea for long periods of time, often far from contact with authorities or their families.
 
As profit margins are squeezed in overfished seas, experts say boat owners or unscrupulous captains who marshal the workers hold out on agreed salaries or instead promise a percentage of the catch as payment that never materializes.
 
Yet the supply of labor has increased since the pandemic with whole communities left out of work for months on end.
 
One Thai fisherman from the landlocked northeastern farming region of Isaan, who has been cheated of his wages before but is preparing to go back out to sea, said the poorest have few options as the pandemic crushes their incomes.“The guys from my village still go out to sea,” the fisher told VOA news, requesting anonymity. “We know the risks, but we’re willing to gamble our lives. Staying home can be as bad; we can go hungry.”
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